Bush and the Texas Air National Guard

Along with all the street dancing and shouts about a 1000 year Hussein reigns, or at least until 2012, I find a fair amount of history rewriting going on. To help us all in remember a few simple facts, I note the following thoughts about the various claims of those suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome – BDS.

Bush was AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard (Tang) unit, and numerous other charges.

I guess the place to start would be at the beginning. “Bush’s daddy used political influence to get him into TANG.”

E.D. Hill: One of the other claims is that President Bush, because of his connections, was able to, in essence, jump in front of hundreds of applicants. Now, you were the head of the Texas National Guard at that time. Did a significant number of people meet the requirements for the physical, educational, and security needs to even apply for the specific position that Bush took?

Col. Lively: No. Actually, I wasn't the head of the Air National Guard. But I was the head of Operations. I was Director of Operations and I oversaw and inspected all of the units in Texas. Flew with them. And the, there was no waiting list for this. See, this is often confused with another thing. Which was a waiting list to simply enlist in the Guard and do your service their rather than in the regular military. And there were lots of people on those waiting lists. But those people weren't qualified to go to pilot training school.

Now, in the course of reading all this stuff, I discovered that Lt. Bush took the Air Force Pilot and Officer examinations while he was still at Yale finishing up. So obviously he was looking for a place to be a pilot.

Link

So there you go. A Waiting List to become a ground pounder and keep out of the Army, but there was no list to attend flight school.

BTW – When Bush joined TANG other Air National Guard units were serving in Vietnam, some flying the same F102 that TANG was flying and Bush would train to fly, and did fly. If he was going to use “my daddy’s influence” to keep out of danger he could have been “put ahead” for one of the coveted ground pounder slots.

My guess is that he wanted to a pilot because his Father had been one, took the exams while in school and TANG was available. He had no idea if he would wind up in Vietnam, just as if he had joined the Air Force he wouldn’t have known.

So he went into TANG, went through training and things just went along. Then in May of ’72, he asked to be allowed to do his monthly training near Montgomery. AL at the 187th TAC Recon group so that he could work for William Blount in Blount’s Senate campaign. He also failed to take a flight physical and was placed on non-flying status.

There has been a lot of back and forth over why he did this and the infamous forgery that almost threw an election but wound up getting the CBS producer, Mary Mapes, fired as well as Dan Rather. My thoughts? Media corporations do not like to eat crow. If the memo was not a slam dunk fake CBS would never have done what it did.

As for the flight physical, I think the answer to be simple. Bush was not going to be flying, so he didn’t bother.

Now I know this may be hard for some to realize, but you don’t just take the keys to a jet off the hook on the closet door and go for a spin. Procedures vary from squadron to squadron but such things as training needs… say cross country navigation…..etc., of the individual pilot is taken into consideration… And you especially don’t go out and hop in an aircraft you have never flown. There’s training… that word again…required.


And there’s something that every teenager knows. “Gas money.” Yes dear chums, military organizations just don’t have an endless supply of fuel. They have…gasp!....budgets. What this means is that flight time is precious and you don’t just show up and start taking someone’s place. Bush would not have been welcomed in that regard.


And then there’s the training issue. I don’t know what the 187th was flying in 1972 but since they were a reconnaissance squadron you can be sure it wasn’t a F102 jet fighter. In other words, Bush would have known he wouldn’t be flying so a flight physical wouldn’t have been very high on his list of “do things.” Plenty of time for that when he came back and if he went back to flying. (More on this later.)

But of course none of this happened because “Bush was AWOL.”

Problem is, they dug his pay records that showed he was there. And the:

commander of the Alabama unit of the Air National Guard, Brigadier General William Turnipseed, said he doesn't remember seeing Bush at Air Guard meetings in Alabama at that time.

But, in an NBC News interview this week, the general expressed surprise that his remarks caused such consternation. "George Bush wasn't even famous back then, so why would I notice this outsider showing up at a couple of meetings. I just wouldn't."

Not only wasn’t he famous, he was a First Lieutenant. Dearest Chums, Base Commanders do not notice First Lieutenants unless they have done something really, really good or really, really bad. Bush had done neither.

So not only was he there, but they found a lady who said she dated him.

But further confirmation was supplied yesterday by a woman who dated the young George W. Bush in 1972 who says she distinctly remembers the young pilot visiting Montgomery that year to fulfill his Air National Guard commitment.

Emily Marks Curtis told The Times that she and Mr. Bush met in the summer of 1972 when he went to Montgomery from Texas to work in the U.S. Senate campaign of Winton Blount, a Bush family friend. She said the two became good friends.

After that election, she said, Mr. Bush returned to Texas. A few weeks later, he telephoned to say he was returning to Montgomery to complete drilling days at an Alabama squadron to which he had been transferred that year.

It has been standard procedure for many years for National Guard units to excuse members from scheduled drills for employment reasons, with the stipulation that missed drill time be made up.

"He called to tell me he was coming back to finish up his National Guard duty," said Mrs. Curtis, who now lives in New Orleans. "I can say categorically he was there, and that's why he came back."

She said that he rented an apartment for a two-week stay and that she met him for dinner several times.

MSNBC LINK

Base Commanders may not notice or remember First Lieutenants. But young ladies notice them, and older ladies remember…”If I had married him I would be First Lady.”

But she didn’t and Bush returned to Houston where he asked for and received an early out to attend Harvard Business School.

And therein we have another complaint. Why did Bush get out? Why did TANG let him go?

Again the answer is simple. Remember when I said “if he went back to flying?” And remember my comments about training and fuel and approval? Well, it works like this. By 1973 TANG knew that the F102’s days were numbered and that from there through 1974they would be getting ready to transition into the Voodoo? (They completed in 1975.)

Well, they had a choice with Bush, and others like him. Keep him around and spend time and money on keeping him capable of flying the F102 and then lose him in 1974, when his enlistment expired, or let him go and devote resources to those who were going to stay in TANG..

Guess what. The military is not, no matter what you believed after reading “Catch 22,” irrational. They gave him his early out.

But none of this will make sense to the average Leftie. 99% of them have never been near the military and 99% believe that there are only two people who control the US and they are pawns of the evil Zionists! OK! I overstate but you get the idea.