Col, you are still ignoring the questions. Democrats said Saddam had WMD and was a threat before Bush. Were the lying col. Answer the question.

Only AWOL Bush speeks the truth. What a bunch of BS!

Bush was not AWOL col. Do you wish to lose that arguement again?

Democrats did not propose to invade Iraq!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was BUSH.

Yes, Bush was not at his place of duty for 5 months in 1972 and did not attend a exercise that he was ordered to attend with his unit in 1973. That is the like being AWOL when on active duty. Members of the Guard and Reserve that did not attend required drills were placed on Active Duty and were subject to assignment to Vietnam during that period. Why was Bush not placed on Active Duty for not attending drills? No, he was granted an early Honorable discharge. I wonder how that happened? 1-year gap in Bush's guard duty No record of airman at drills in 1972-73 By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff | May 23, 2000 After George W. Bush became governor in 1995, the Houston Air National Guard unit he had served with during the Vietnam War years honored him for his work, noting that he flew an F-102 fighter-interceptor until his discharge in October 1973. And Bush himself, in his 1999 autobiography, "A Charge to Keep," recounts the thrills of his pilot training, which he completed in June 1970. "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years," the governor wrote. But both accounts are contradicted by copies of Bush's military records, obtained by the Globe. In his final 18 months of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all. And for much of that time, Bush was all but unaccounted for: For a full year, there is no record that he showed up for the periodic drills required of part-time guardsmen. Bush, who declined to be interviewed on the issue, said through a spokesman that he has "some recollection" of attending drills that year, but maybe not consistently. From May to November 1972, Bush was in Alabama working in a US Senate campaign, and was required to attend drills at an Air National Guard unit in Montgomery. But there is no evidence in his record that he did so. And William Turnipseed, the retired general who commanded the Alabama unit back then, said in an interview last week that Bush never appeared for duty there. After the election, Bush returned to Houston. But seven months later, in May 1973, his two superior officers at Ellington Air Force Base could not perform his annual evaluation covering the year from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973 because, they wrote, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report." Bush, they mistakenly concluded, had been training with the Alabama unit for the previous 12 months. Both men have since died. But Ellington's top personnel officer at the time, retired Colonel Rufus G. Martin, said he had believed that First Lieutenant Bush completed his final year of service in Alabama. A Bush spokesman, Dan Bartlett, said after talking with the governor that Bush recalls performing some duty in Alabama and "recalls coming back to Houston and doing [Guard] duty, though he does not recall if it was on a consistent basis." Noting that Bush, by that point, was no longer flying, Bartlett added, "It's possible his presence and role became secondary." Last night, Mindy Tucker, another Bush campaign aide, asserted that the governor "fulfilled all of his requirements in the Guard." If he missed any drills, she said, he made them up later on. Under Air National Guard rules at the time, guardsmen who missed duty could be reported to their Selective Service Board and inducted into the Army as draftees. If Bush's interest in Guard duty waned, as spokesman Bartlett hinted, the records and former Guard officials suggest that Bush's unit was lackadaisical in holding him to his commitment. Many states, Texas among them, had a record during the Vietnam War of providing a haven in the Guard for the sons of the well-connected, and a tendency to excuse shirking by those with political connections. Those who trained and flew with Bush, until he gave up flying in April 1972, said he was among the best pilots in the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron. In the 22-month period between the end of his flight training and his move to Alabama, Bush logged numerous hours of duty, well above the minimum requirements for so-called "weekend warriors." Indeed, in the first four years of his six-year commitment, Bush spent the equivalent of 21 months on active duty, including 18 months in flight school. His Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore, who enlisted in the Army for two years and spent five months in Vietnam, logged only about a month more active service, since he won an early release from service. Still, the puzzling gap in Bush's military service is likely to heighten speculation about the conspicuous underachievement that marked the period between his 1968 graduation from Yale University and his 1973 entry into Harvard Business School. It is speculation that Bush has helped to fuel: For example, he refused for months last year to say whether he had ever used illegal drugs. Subsequently, however, Bush amended his stance, saying that he had not done so since 1974. The period in 1972 and 1973 when Bush sidestepped his military obligation coincides with a well-publicized incident during the 1972 Christmas holidays: Bush had a confrontation with his father after he took his younger brother, Marvin, out drinking and returned to the family's Washington home after knocking over some garbage cans on the ride home. In his autobiography, Bush says that his decision to go to business school the following September was "a turning point for me." Assessing Bush's military service three decades later is no easy task: Some of his superiors are no longer alive. Others declined to comment, or, understandably, cannot recall details about Bush's comings and goings. And as Bush has risen in public life over the last several years, Texas military officials have put many of his records off-limits and heavily redacted many other pages, ostensibly because of privacy rules. But 160 pages of his records, assembled by the Globe from a variety of sources and supplemented by interviews with former Guard officials, paint a picture of an Air Guardsman who enjoyed favored treatment on several occasions. The ease of Bush's entry into the Air Guard was widely reported last year. At a time when such billets were coveted and his father was a Houston congressman, Bush vaulted to the top of a waiting list of 500. Bush and his father have denied that he received any preferential treatment. But last year, Ben Barnes, who was speaker of the Texas House in 1968, said in a sworn deposition in a civil lawsuit that he called Guard officials seeking a Guard slot for Bush after a friend of Bush's father asked him to do so. Before he went to basic training, Bush was approved for an automatic commission as a second lieutenant and assignment to flight school despite a score of just 25 percent on a pilot aptitude test. Such commissions were not uncommon, although most often they went to prospective pilots who had college ROTC courses or prior Air Force experience. Bush had neither. In interviews last week, Guard officials from that era said Bush leapfrogged over other applicants because few applicants were willing to commit to the 18 months of flight training or the inherent dangers of flying. As a pilot, the future governor appeared to do well. After eight weeks of basic training in the summer of 1968 - and a two-month break to work on a Senate race in Florida - Bush attended 55 weeks of flight school at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, from November 1968 to November 1969, followed by five months of full-time training on the F-102 back at Ellington. Retired Colonel Maurice H. Udell, Bush's instructor in the F-102, said he was impressed with Bush's talent and his attitude. "He had his boots shined, his uniform pressed, his hair cut and he said, `Yes, sir' and `No, sir,' " the instructor recalled. Said Udell, "I would rank him in the top 5 percent of pilots I knew. And in the thinking department, he was in the top 1 percent. He was very capable and tough as a boot." But 22 months after finishing his training, and with two years left on his six-year commitment, Bush gave up flying - for good, it would turn out. He sought permission to do "equivalent training" at a Guard unit in Alabama, where he planned to work for several months on the Republican Senate campaign of Winton Blount, a friend of Bush's father. The proposed move took Bush off flight status, since no Alabama Guard unit had the F-102 he was trained to fly. At that point, starting in May 1972, First Lieutenant Bush began to disappear from the Guard's radar screen. When the Globe first raised questions about this period earlier this month, Bartlett, Bush's spokesman, referred a reporter to Albert Lloyd Jr., a retired colonel who was the Texas Air Guard's personnel director from 1969 to 1995. Lloyd, who a year ago helped the Bush campaign make sense of the governor's military records, said Bush's aides were concerned about the gap in his records back then. On May 24, 1972, after he moved to Alabama, Bush made a formal request to do his equivalent training at the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Two days later, that unit's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Reese H. Bricken, agreed to have Bush join his unit temporarily. In Houston, Bush's superiors approved. But a higher headquarters disapproved, noting that Bricken's unit did not have regular drills. "We met just one weeknight a month. We were only a postal unit. We had no airplanes. We had no pilots. We had no nothing," Bricken said in an interview. Last week, Lloyd said he is mystified why Bush's superiors at the time approved duty at such a unit. Inexplicably, months went by with no resolution to Bush's status - and no Guard duty. Bush's evident disconnection from his Guard duties was underscored in August, when he was removed from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical. Finally, on Sept. 5, 1972, Bush requested permission to do duty for September, October, and November at the 187th Tactical Recon Group in Montgomery. Permission was granted, and Bush was directed to report to Turnipseed, the unit's commander. In interviews last week, Turnipseed and his administrative officer at the time, Kenneth K. Lott, said they had no memory of Bush ever reporting. "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall, and I do not," Turnipseed said. "I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered." Lloyd, the retired Texas Air Guard official, said he does not know whether Bush performed duty in Alabama. "If he did, his drill attendance should have been certified and sent to Ellington, and there would have been a record. We cannot find the records to show he fulfilled the requirements in Alabama," he said. Indeed, Bush's discharge papers list his service and duty station for each of his first four years in the Air Guard. But there is no record of training listed after May 1972, and no mention of any service in Alabama. On that discharge form, Lloyd said, "there should have been an entry for the period between May 1972 and May 1973." Said Lloyd, "It appeared he had a bad year. He might have lost interest, since he knew he was getting out." In an effort last year to solve the puzzle, Lloyd said he scoured Guard records, where he found two "special orders" commanding Bush to appear for active duty on nine days in May 1973. That is the same month that Lieutenant Colonel William D. Harris Jr. and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian effectively declared Bush missing from duty. In Bush's annual efficiency report, dated May 2, 1973, the two supervising pilots did not rate Bush for the prior year, writing, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report. A civilian occupation made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Alabama. He cleared this base on 15 May 1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non-flying status with the 187 Tac Recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama." Asked about that declaration, campaign spokesman Bartlett said Bush told him that since he was no longer flying, he was doing "odds and ends" under different supervisors whose names he could not recall. But retired colonel Martin, the unit's former administrative officer, said he too thought Bush had been in Alabama for that entire year. Harris and Killian, he said, would have known if Bush returned to duty at Ellington. And Bush, in his autobiography, identifies the late colonel Killian as a friend, making it even more likely that Killian knew where Bush was. Lieutenant Bush, to be sure, had gone off flying status when he went to Alabama. But had he returned to his unit in November 1972, there would have been no barrier to him flying again, except passing a flight physical. Although the F-102 was being phased out, his unit's records show that Guard pilots logged thousands of hours in the F-102 in 1973. During his search, Lloyd said, the only other paperwork he discovered was a single torn page bearing Bush's social security number and numbers awarding some points for Guard duty. But the partial page is undated. If it represents the year in question, it leaves unexplained why Bush's two superior officers would have declared him absent for the full year. There is no doubt that Bush was in Houston in late 1972 and early 1973. During that period, according to Bush's autobiography, he held a civilian job working for an inner-city, antipoverty program in the city. Lloyd, who has studied the records extensively, said he is an admirer of the governor and believes "the governor honestly served his country and fulfilled his commitment." But Lloyd said it is possible that since Bush had his sights set on discharge and the unit was beginning to replace the F-102s, Bush's superiors told him he was not "in the flow chart. Maybe George Bush took that as a signal and said, `Hell, I'm not going to bother going to drills.' "Well, then it comes rating time, and someone says, `Oh. . .he hasn't fulfilled his obligation.' I'll bet someone called him up and said, `George, you're in a pickle. Get your ass down here and perform some duty.' And he did," Lloyd said. That would explain, Lloyd said, the records showing Bush cramming so many drills into May, June, and July 1973. During those three months, Bush spent 36 days on duty. Bush's last day in uniform before he moved to Cambridge was July 30, 1973. His official release from active duty was dated Oct. 1, 1973, eight months before his six-year commitment was scheduled to end. Officially, the period between May 1972 and May 1973 remains unaccounted for. In November 1973, responding to a request from the headquarters of the Air National Guard for Bush's annual evaluation for that year, Martin, the Ellington administrative officer, wrote, "Report for this period not available for administrative reasons."

I saw this headline & all I could do was laugh. Pitifully, but laugh. I really didn't think things could get more absurd with Gene, but boy-oh-boy was I wrong.

Cheers,
Daiwa

Darn, I know I said I wouldn't post on another of Col's articles but I just can't resist.

"We were underequipped," Blum said. "We don't need tanks and attack helicopters and artillery, but we must have state-of-the-art radios and communications."

From the article itself. This sounds like an excuse for the mistakes made in New Orleans.

Much of the Guard's best communications equipment was being used by troops fighting in Iraq and wasn't available for units helping Gulf Coast states recover from the hurricane, Blum said

For example, the Army Guard is using Vietnam-era radios while it needs 37,000 newer radios, according to a recent Guard budget briefing paper posted on its website.

I have an idea, since they are more concerned with having state-of-the-art equipment to help in disasters as said here:

but we must have state-of-the-art radios and communications."

Let's just take the good radios from those soldiers in Iraq and exchange them with those from the National Guard in the hurican dammaged areas. That way our boys in the LINE OF FIRE can have problems helping each other while our boys here, eating good food, drinking clean water, sleeping in confy beds, can do a better job help the less fortunate in disasters with they new cool equiptment.

With all the new types of communication we have today, most of it can be bought in places like Radio Shack, that all we have for our National Guard is outdated Vietnam-era radios? I refuse to believe that.

I do believe good equipment should be available but I just wanna know why did they wait till now, till after all the disasters, till after all this time sisnce the disasters, to send a letter to the Bush Admin asking for more money to equip the National Guard? Why was this not an issue before the disasters? Just wondering.

BTW, repeticion is the key to success. At least Col thinks it is for him.

Hey Col, have you ever asked yourself that if a story like this should be considered so important, and I personally think if this is true it should be very important, than how come just one news network has the story?

BTW, it's not CNN Today MR know-it-all, its USAToday.com. How are we suppose to believe anything you say when you can't even get your websites straight?

Democrats did not propose to invade Iraq!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was BUSH. Yes, Bush was not at his place of duty for 5 months in 1972 and did not attend a exercise that he was ordered to attend with his unit in 1973. That is the like being AWOL when on active duty. Members of the Guard and Reserve that did not attend required drills were placed on Active Duty and were subject to assignment to Vietnam during that period. Why was Bush not placed on Active Duty for not attending drills? No, he was granted an early Honorable discharge. I wonder how that happened? 1-year gap in Bush's guard duty No record of airman at drills in 1972-73 By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff | May 23, 2000 After George W. Bush became governor in 1995, the Houston Air National Guard unit he had served with during the Vietnam War years honored him for his work, noting that he flew an F-102 fighter-interceptor until his discharge in October 1973. And Bush himself, in his 1999 autobiography, "A Charge to Keep," recounts the thrills of his pilot training, which he completed in June 1970. "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years," the governor wrote. But both accounts are contradicted by copies of Bush's military records, obtained by the Globe. In his final 18 months of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all. And for much of that time, Bush was all but unaccounted for: For a full year, there is no record that he showed up for the periodic drills required of part-time guardsmen. Bush, who declined to be interviewed on the issue, said through a spokesman that he has "some recollection" of attending drills that year, but maybe not consistently. From May to November 1972, Bush was in Alabama working in a US Senate campaign, and was required to attend drills at an Air National Guard unit in Montgomery. But there is no evidence in his record that he did so. And William Turnipseed, the retired general who commanded the Alabama unit back then, said in an interview last week that Bush never appeared for duty there. After the election, Bush returned to Houston. But seven months later, in May 1973, his two superior officers at Ellington Air Force Base could not perform his annual evaluation covering the year from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973 because, they wrote, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report." Bush, they mistakenly concluded, had been training with the Alabama unit for the previous 12 months. Both men have since died. But Ellington's top personnel officer at the time, retired Colonel Rufus G. Martin, said he had believed that First Lieutenant Bush completed his final year of service in Alabama. A Bush spokesman, Dan Bartlett, said after talking with the governor that Bush recalls performing some duty in Alabama and "recalls coming back to Houston and doing [Guard] duty, though he does not recall if it was on a consistent basis." Noting that Bush, by that point, was no longer flying, Bartlett added, "It's possible his presence and role became secondary." Last night, Mindy Tucker, another Bush campaign aide, asserted that the governor "fulfilled all of his requirements in the Guard." If he missed any drills, she said, he made them up later on. Under Air National Guard rules at the time, guardsmen who missed duty could be reported to their Selective Service Board and inducted into the Army as draftees. If Bush's interest in Guard duty waned, as spokesman Bartlett hinted, the records and former Guard officials suggest that Bush's unit was lackadaisical in holding him to his commitment. Many states, Texas among them, had a record during the Vietnam War of providing a haven in the Guard for the sons of the well-connected, and a tendency to excuse shirking by those with political connections. Those who trained and flew with Bush, until he gave up flying in April 1972, said he was among the best pilots in the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron. In the 22-month period between the end of his flight training and his move to Alabama, Bush logged numerous hours of duty, well above the minimum requirements for so-called "weekend warriors." Indeed, in the first four years of his six-year commitment, Bush spent the equivalent of 21 months on active duty, including 18 months in flight school. His Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore, who enlisted in the Army for two years and spent five months in Vietnam, logged only about a month more active service, since he won an early release from service. Still, the puzzling gap in Bush's military service is likely to heighten speculation about the conspicuous underachievement that marked the period between his 1968 graduation from Yale University and his 1973 entry into Harvard Business School. It is speculation that Bush has helped to fuel: For example, he refused for months last year to say whether he had ever used illegal drugs. Subsequently, however, Bush amended his stance, saying that he had not done so since 1974. The period in 1972 and 1973 when Bush sidestepped his military obligation coincides with a well-publicized incident during the 1972 Christmas holidays: Bush had a confrontation with his father after he took his younger brother, Marvin, out drinking and returned to the family's Washington home after knocking over some garbage cans on the ride home. In his autobiography, Bush says that his decision to go to business school the following September was "a turning point for me." Assessing Bush's military service three decades later is no easy task: Some of his superiors are no longer alive. Others declined to comment, or, understandably, cannot recall details about Bush's comings and goings. And as Bush has risen in public life over the last several years, Texas military officials have put many of his records off-limits and heavily redacted many other pages, ostensibly because of privacy rules. But 160 pages of his records, assembled by the Globe from a variety of sources and supplemented by interviews with former Guard officials, paint a picture of an Air Guardsman who enjoyed favored treatment on several occasions. The ease of Bush's entry into the Air Guard was widely reported last year. At a time when such billets were coveted and his father was a Houston congressman, Bush vaulted to the top of a waiting list of 500. Bush and his father have denied that he received any preferential treatment. But last year, Ben Barnes, who was speaker of the Texas House in 1968, said in a sworn deposition in a civil lawsuit that he called Guard officials seeking a Guard slot for Bush after a friend of Bush's father asked him to do so. Before he went to basic training, Bush was approved for an automatic commission as a second lieutenant and assignment to flight school despite a score of just 25 percent on a pilot aptitude test. Such commissions were not uncommon, although most often they went to prospective pilots who had college ROTC courses or prior Air Force experience. Bush had neither. In interviews last week, Guard officials from that era said Bush leapfrogged over other applicants because few applicants were willing to commit to the 18 months of flight training or the inherent dangers of flying. As a pilot, the future governor appeared to do well. After eight weeks of basic training in the summer of 1968 - and a two-month break to work on a Senate race in Florida - Bush attended 55 weeks of flight school at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, from November 1968 to November 1969, followed by five months of full-time training on the F-102 back at Ellington. Retired Colonel Maurice H. Udell, Bush's instructor in the F-102, said he was impressed with Bush's talent and his attitude. "He had his boots shined, his uniform pressed, his hair cut and he said, `Yes, sir' and `No, sir,' " the instructor recalled. Said Udell, "I would rank him in the top 5 percent of pilots I knew. And in the thinking department, he was in the top 1 percent. He was very capable and tough as a boot." But 22 months after finishing his training, and with two years left on his six-year commitment, Bush gave up flying - for good, it would turn out. He sought permission to do "equivalent training" at a Guard unit in Alabama, where he planned to work for several months on the Republican Senate campaign of Winton Blount, a friend of Bush's father. The proposed move took Bush off flight status, since no Alabama Guard unit had the F-102 he was trained to fly. At that point, starting in May 1972, First Lieutenant Bush began to disappear from the Guard's radar screen. When the Globe first raised questions about this period earlier this month, Bartlett, Bush's spokesman, referred a reporter to Albert Lloyd Jr., a retired colonel who was the Texas Air Guard's personnel director from 1969 to 1995. Lloyd, who a year ago helped the Bush campaign make sense of the governor's military records, said Bush's aides were concerned about the gap in his records back then. On May 24, 1972, after he moved to Alabama, Bush made a formal request to do his equivalent training at the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Two days later, that unit's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Reese H. Bricken, agreed to have Bush join his unit temporarily. In Houston, Bush's superiors approved. But a higher headquarters disapproved, noting that Bricken's unit did not have regular drills. "We met just one weeknight a month. We were only a postal unit. We had no airplanes. We had no pilots. We had no nothing," Bricken said in an interview. Last week, Lloyd said he is mystified why Bush's superiors at the time approved duty at such a unit. Inexplicably, months went by with no resolution to Bush's status - and no Guard duty. Bush's evident disconnection from his Guard duties was underscored in August, when he was removed from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical. Finally, on Sept. 5, 1972, Bush requested permission to do duty for September, October, and November at the 187th Tactical Recon Group in Montgomery. Permission was granted, and Bush was directed to report to Turnipseed, the unit's commander. In interviews last week, Turnipseed and his administrative officer at the time, Kenneth K. Lott, said they had no memory of Bush ever reporting. "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall, and I do not," Turnipseed said. "I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered." Lloyd, the retired Texas Air Guard official, said he does not know whether Bush performed duty in Alabama. "If he did, his drill attendance should have been certified and sent to Ellington, and there would have been a record. We cannot find the records to show he fulfilled the requirements in Alabama," he said. Indeed, Bush's discharge papers list his service and duty station for each of his first four years in the Air Guard. But there is no record of training listed after May 1972, and no mention of any service in Alabama. On that discharge form, Lloyd said, "there should have been an entry for the period between May 1972 and May 1973." Said Lloyd, "It appeared he had a bad year. He might have lost interest, since he knew he was getting out." In an effort last year to solve the puzzle, Lloyd said he scoured Guard records, where he found two "special orders" commanding Bush to appear for active duty on nine days in May 1973. That is the same month that Lieutenant Colonel William D. Harris Jr. and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian effectively declared Bush missing from duty. In Bush's annual efficiency report, dated May 2, 1973, the two supervising pilots did not rate Bush for the prior year, writing, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report. A civilian occupation made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Alabama. He cleared this base on 15 May 1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non-flying status with the 187 Tac Recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama." Asked about that declaration, campaign spokesman Bartlett said Bush told him that since he was no longer flying, he was doing "odds and ends" under different supervisors whose names he could not recall. But retired colonel Martin, the unit's former administrative officer, said he too thought Bush had been in Alabama for that entire year. Harris and Killian, he said, would have known if Bush returned to duty at Ellington. And Bush, in his autobiography, identifies the late colonel Killian as a friend, making it even more likely that Killian knew where Bush was. Lieutenant Bush, to be sure, had gone off flying status when he went to Alabama. But had he returned to his unit in November 1972, there would have been no barrier to him flying again, except passing a flight physical. Although the F-102 was being phased out, his unit's records show that Guard pilots logged thousands of hours in the F-102 in 1973. During his search, Lloyd said, the only other paperwork he discovered was a single torn page bearing Bush's social security number and numbers awarding some points for Guard duty. But the partial page is undated. If it represents the year in question, it leaves unexplained why Bush's two superior officers would have declared him absent for the full year. There is no doubt that Bush was in Houston in late 1972 and early 1973. During that period, according to Bush's autobiography, he held a civilian job working for an inner-city, antipoverty program in the city. Lloyd, who has studied the records extensively, said he is an admirer of the governor and believes "the governor honestly served his country and fulfilled his commitment." But Lloyd said it is possible that since Bush had his sights set on discharge and the unit was beginning to replace the F-102s, Bush's superiors told him he was not "in the flow chart. Maybe George Bush took that as a signal and said, `Hell, I'm not going to bother going to drills.' "Well, then it comes rating time, and someone says, `Oh. . .he hasn't fulfilled his obligation.' I'll bet someone called him up and said, `George, you're in a pickle. Get your ass down here and perform some duty.' And he did," Lloyd said. That would explain, Lloyd said, the records showing Bush cramming so many drills into May, June, and July 1973. During those three months, Bush spent 36 days on duty. Bush's last day in uniform before he moved to Cambridge was July 30, 1973. His official release from active duty was dated Oct. 1, 1973, eight months before his six-year commitment was scheduled to end. Officially, the period between May 1972 and May 1973 remains unaccounted for. In November 1973, responding to a request from the headquarters of the Air National Guard for Bush's annual evaluation for that year, Martin, the Ellington administrative officer, wrote, "Report for this period not available for administrative reasons."

I would love to have seen all those people who edited your book before it was published. I can only imagine all the spell errors, the searching for the end of one paragraph and beginning of another, all the missing and misplaced punctuation marks.Your rough draft must have been a great page saver. Well, at least you seem to be using a spell checker, I find it hard to believe that you didn't make any of your normal mistakes in this giant paragraph you wrote.

CNN is the station I heard the comments about the Guard today. The point has been made earlier by many governors and other state National Guard Commamnders that much of their equipment is in Iraq and that it needs replacing. WHY is the Commander in Chief not acting to meet the needs of the Guard by including the funding in his budget? He and the conservatives in Congress just gave the OIL companies tax cuts of $12 Billion which is almost enough to replace all the Guard equipmemt. Why would Bush sign a bill that gives tax cuts to an industry that is making record profits and not fund the National Guard or the Border guards HE SAID we needed to protect us?

Can one of you Bushies explain why any President would act like this?

When you can not counter the facts, you try something else. Just like Bush!

CNN is the station I heard the comments about the Guard today. The point has been made earlier by many governors and other state National Guard Commamnders that much of their equipment is in Iraq and that it needs replacing. WHY is the Commander in Chief not acting to meet the needs of the Guard by including the funding in his budget? He and the conservatives in Congress just gave the OIL companies tax cuts of $12 Billion which is almost enough to replace all the Guard equipmemt. Why would Bush sign a bill that gives tax cuts to an industry that is making record profits and not fund the National Guard or the Border guards HE SAID we needed to protect us? Can one of you Bushies explain why any President would act like this?

Can you show "proof" that he's not funding them? Not just your opinion.....proof!

And you sir are a living (?) example of the uninformed type of people that are on this Blog site. Any source,, no matter how well qualified, that shows Bush does know what he is doing is attacked or ignored by you. Notice that I cleaned up your spelling mistakes.

Democrats did not propose to invade Iraq!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was BUSH.

You have still avoided the question again col. The democrats supported the invasion of Iraq. The democrats said Saddam was a threat and had WMD's. Most before Bush was in office. Stop being a hypocrit and answer the question. Were they liars col?

I don't know where you copied that text from, but Bush was not AWOL. You have already lost that arguement and I see you want to be told again.

CNN is the station I heard the comments about the Guard today.

And you still haven't provided proof. I searched for an hour and could not find anything to back up your claim today. Being that you distort information to bash Bush, and that CNN is one of the most biased "news" agencies, then you claim is pointless.

He and the conservatives in Congress just gave the OIL companies tax cuts of $12 Billion which is almost enough to replace all the Guard equipmemt.

Ah yes. It wouldn't be a true liberal rant without bringing oil companies into this. Col, how much do we spend on welfare? Let's get rid of that and buy more guns for the National Guard.

I would love to have seen all those people who edited your book before it was published.

Col is not a real author. Anybody with Microsoft Word and a fedex kinkos can become an "author" nowadays.

Some Democrats voted for the war predicated on incomplete intel. Most of that intel has been shown to be wrong. If they had ALL the intel when they voted, we might not have gone to war. Anyone that can say, knowing what we know today, that this war was justified is NUTS!

Col, you have to be the biggest hypocrit and democratic apologist I have seen. Were the democrats who said Saddam was a threat and had WMD before Bush was elected lying?

You keep making excuses col. The Congress had intel, there was no fraud, misleading, or lies. Understand that and answer the questions.

The commanding General of the National Guard said yesterday the National Guard does not the equipment needed to perform its basic mission because of the Iraq War. The National Guard has only 34 % of the needed equipment and much of that equipment is in not in good condition. The vast majority of the National Guard Equipment was shipped to Iraq and even when it is returned will be unusable because of the war.

Speaking from first hand experience here. Since your taking this info from 30 second CNN sound bites, I am sure you’re not getting the complete story here. The only way I could think about fitting that only 34% is in good condition, would be upon the equipment's arrival back to the US mob station.

Upon return from Iraq all equipment goes to a mob station, before return to the unit home State. While there, each piece of equipment is goes through a top to bottom technical inspection (or T/I for you military folks). Every defective part or missing component is then placed on order. Only after the TI is completed will all the equipment is shipped back to the State, where the Organizational Maintenance Shops will receive the parts. The only equipment not being return to the State are those have requiring major overhaul or high tech equipment that gets a good once over at depot level periodically anyway. Unlike past deployments before Iraq, the parts requested have been funded and the have been arriving within the State in short order. So technically the Commander is most likely right that returning equipment is rolling off the boats in a mess, but over all the Guard is far from broke.

Of all my units that have returned from deployment, the above has happened and all have reported up and even deployable at their first required "Unit Serviceability Report" (USR) after return. Within my State and three other States I have sub-units in, no major equipment problems has been identified. That is not saying some other States maybe having problems, but I also attend national conferences, briefings, and training exercises. Other then the normal hitches here and there, no major short falls have been identified.

To be honest, funding and new fielding of equipment has stepped up markedly in the last year, while slumping during the original deployments to cover installation's needs in theater. In fact I would have to say that we have received many of the most modern items considered a pipe dream no more then four years ago. The day of the old Duce and a half truck is coming to an end and some of the most high tech commo equipment, that has always been relegated to active services only, are quickly filling our motor pools. It was not uncommon during Kosovo for funding to be cut or worse pulled over three months before fiscal year ended. But funding is at levels that I have not seen since before 1991.

Chaos is right in his post about equipment levels. Gene, the Guard and reserve that you retired from in the 90's is not the same we have now. Back then we were luck to get the hand me downs from active service and it was not uncommon to strip parts from one vehicle to keep other operating. Now it is not uncommon have a fielding team from the manufacturer conducting classes first hand as the equipment rolls off the trucks into the yard and the only parts we are slow to get is because the factory is a little backordered.

There have been reports from The active services, Army and Marines, that claim the equipment used in Iraq will require either Depot rebuild or replacement. The atrticles I read said that the conditions in Iraq add 10 years of service for every 1 year in that sand pile. The Chief of the Guard said the Guard in the U S had only 34% of its equipment with the remander in Iraq. Much of the Gurad equipment is in need of replacement. The National Guard units could not commuicate with the 82nd in the Gulf after Katrina. The 82 nd had to loan the Guard units equipment to communicate. Any military organization that can not communicate is LOST.

My point, Bush is NOT requesting the funding in the budget to rebuild and or replace this equipment. When the Active Units return, they too will be faced with the most major equipment replacement since WWII. We can give tax cuts but have no money for needed military equipment, Food Stamps, Medicaid, Student loans etc. We have got our priorities all screwed up!