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[bryant]

President Bush says, regarding his National Guard service in Alabama:

 There may be no evidence, but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been honorably discharged.  In other words, you don’t just say “I did something” without there being verification.  Military doesn’t work that way.  I got an honorable discharge, and I did show up in Alabama.

This really simplifies the question. It’s not about the honorable discharge, or whether or not it was OK to miss some service as long as you got the OK from your CO, or any of that. It’s about whether or not he showed up in Alabama. This isn’t a matter of missing documentation, either; it’s about documents which show no service in Alabama in 1972.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Thanks; that was one of the things i wondered after the "deserter" crap occurred. There's also this, which you might have already seen.

Re:

[bryant]

Yep, I've seen that one. It's oft-quoted as a rebuttal.

I note that both the people who claim he was serving in Alabama are relying on a) hearsay and b) Bush's version of events. Neither are eye-witnesses.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Right. There's a difference between remembering Bush telling you that he couldn't work for a weekend because he had Guard duty and remembering him showing up for the required drills.

Re:

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

Sorry, anyone who's lived through the past three years has to be a little better than that at parsing misleading statements. Both those people said they knew Bush was in the Guard. Neither one even bothered to state directly that he reported for duty in Alabama, only that he was 'in the Guard' at the time -- an uncontested statement, and in fact the reason he's called a deserter.

It's certain he's not a deserter, because a deserter is one who has been convicted of desertion. (By the same yardstick, Clinton is clearly not a perjurer, of course, and anyone who called him one was guilty of "crap" as well.) But Bush is an alleged deserter, and this much is true: he was in the Guard during the time he was supposed to show up in Alabama. It is is clear he did not have leave not to show up in Alabama. It is claimed he did not show up. To the extent that the claim is true -- and no one has refuted it, those two carefully parsed hearsay statements notwithstanding -- he was AWOL.

Re:

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

That was my take on it as well. I just felt a bit burned because i took Michael Moore's word for it at first, and i already considered him an untrustworthy source.