The New Republic Says GW Bush Went AWOL

 In his autobiography, "A Charge to Keep," Bush claims that after flight training school in 1970, he "continued flying with [his] unit for the next several years." This is not true. In May 1972, Bush moved to Alabama to work on a Senate campaign, and he never flew again. In fact, in August 1972 the Texas Guard took Bush off active flight status for good because he skipped his annual medical exam.

In Alabama and no longer a pilot, Bush was required to perform equivalent Guard duty, and he was ordered to report to Lieutenant Colonel William Turnipseed, who told reporters this year that he has no recollection of Bush ever showing up. Turnipseed's administrative officer at the time has also said he doesn't remember Bush serving in Alabama. Turnipseed told THE NEW REPUBLIC that he recently talked to the then-squadron operations officer of the Alabama Guard and that he, too, had no recollection of having seen Bush. Furthermore, a spokesman for the Alabama National Guard estimates there were 600 to 700 members in the unit Bush was supposed to have served with in 1972. But none of these men has ever come forward to say he remembers Bush, and Bush has not named a single one of them.

Bush himself swears he reported for duty in Alabama but admitted in June, "I can't remember what I did."

There is also no record of Bush ever having served in Alabama, a rather damning fact considering the Guard's obsessive attention to record-keeping in that era. In fact, there is no record of Bush serving anywhere for an entire year, from May 1972 to May 1973-despite having promised he would.

 It's no longer news that George W Bush, to avoid being sent to Vietnam, enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. Nor is it news that Bush, contrary to assertions in his 1999 campaign autobiography A Charge to Keep, appears not to have honored his commitment to the Guard after moving to Alabama for a period, apparently failing to report for duty there for a full year, between May 1972 and May 1973. (No one who was in the Alabama National Guard at the time recalls encountering Bush; the only person who vouches for him is a former girlfriend, who merely says Bush spoke of doing Guard service in Alabama.) What is news, though, is that the Bush campaign continues to lie about Bush's National Guard service.

"George W Bush served as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 until 1973;" reads a snippet from the biography posted on the campaign's website. This is demonstrably false on two counts. For one, although Bush began his Guard service in July 1968, he spent his first two years in basic training and flight school and did not begin serving as a pilot with the 111th Fighter- Interceptor Squadron at Houston's Ellington Field until June 1970. Secondly, as has been reported in The Boston Globe and in these pages, after Bush moved from Texas to Alabama in May 1972, he never flew again. Nor could he, because he skipped his annual medical exam in 1972 and was suspended from flying.

What had been assumed is that Bush, upon returning to Texas from Alabama in May 1973, made up for his missed service by performing nonflying duty At least, that's what Bush campaign spokesman Dan Bartlett told reporters in June. But now it seems unlikely that Bush did even that much. According to a report in the October 31 Boston Globe, "a Bush campaign spokesman acknowledged last week that he knows of no witnesses who can attest to Bush's attendance at drills after he returned to Houston in late 1972 and before his early release from the Guard in September 1973?" That means Bush probably skipped the final 17 months of his National Guard commitment, a period almost as long as the 22 months he served as an actual pilot. But, then again, in the early '70s W. hadn't yet ushered in "the responsibility era."

(The above appeared in the Nov. 13, 200 issue of the New Republic magazine.)