The press, led by The Washington Post reporter married to a GOP operative — Howard Kurtz, continue to focus on the authenticity of the documents used in the CBS story about Bush’s National Guard shenanigans instead of the charges that with increasing veracity seem to be true.
Even the Dallas Morning News, a Bush loving newspaper, leads its story about the Guard secretary who poses as a document expert in a way that confirms the charges.
The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard officer who supposedly wrote memos critical of President Bush’s Guard service said Tuesday that the documents are fake but that they reflect documents that once existed (emphasis added).
And Nick Kristoff relates a Harvard professor’s recollection of a conversation he had with the preppy Bush.
One fall day in 1973, when Mr. Bush was a new student at Harvard Business School, he was wearing a Guard jacket when he ran into one of his professors. The professor, Yoshi Tsurumi, says he asked Mr. Bush how he wangled a spot in the Guard.
“He said his daddy had good friends who got him in despite the long waiting list,” recalls Professor Tsurumi, who is now at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. Professor Tsurumi says he next asked Mr. Bush how he could have already finished his National Guard commitment. “He said he’d gotten an early honorable discharge,” Professor Tsurumi recalls. “I said, ‘How did you manage that?’ “
“He said, oh, his daddy had a good friend,” Mr. Tsurumi said. “Then we started talking about the Vietnam War. He was all for fighting it.”
There’s more good stuff in the column. It’s worth a read.
There’s also this:
Does any of this matter? What troubles me is less Mr. Bush’s advantage three decades ago and more his denial today. Mr. Bush’s own route to avoid the draft underscores the disparities in America, yet his policies seem based on a kind of social Darwinism in which the successful make their own opportunities. His tax cuts and entire outlook seem rooted in ideas not of noblesse oblige, but of noblesse entitlement
Yes, but there’s something else that troubles me. It seems awhile back the GOP was saying it wasn’t that a certain president had sex with an intern, but that he lied about it, and as Josh Marshall points out Bush (surprise!) is less than honest.
We’re never going to stop the rich getting special favors, especially when it comes to fighting wars. But Bush lied about it. And that’s what concerns the GOP. Right?