Rich Kid, AWOL, Liar

I didn't think that this Bush AWOL National Guard story would again catch fire (for about the third time) in the national media. But I guess as long as you put "For Truth" at the end of your 527 name, the media will sit up and take notice. Because it's kind of all over the place, particularly on 60 Minutes last night, which included former Texas Speaker of the House Ben Barnes going public about helping W. (stands for Wrong) to the top of the list:

"It's been a long time ago, but he said basically would I help young George Bush get in the Air National Guard," says Barnes, who then contacted his longtime friend Gen. James Rose, the head of Texas' Air National Guard.

"I was a young ambitious politician doing what I thought was acceptable," says Barnes. "It was important to make friends. And I recommended a lot of people for the National Guard during the Vietnam era - as speaker of the house and as lieutenant governor."

But more damning is the story swirling around Wrong's service in 1972 and 1973, when he moved to first Alabama and then Harvard Business School:

Previously unseen documents from Killian's personal file obtained by 60 Minutes include a memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about "how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November."

Lt. Bush tells his commander "he is working on a campaign in Alabama…. and may not have time to take his physical." Killian adds that he thinks Lt. Bush has gone over his head, and is "talking to someone upstairs."

One of the Killian memos is an official order to Mr. Bush to report for a physical. The president never carried out the order.

In an Aug. 1, 1972 memo, Killian wrote, "On this date I ordered that 1st Lt. Bush be suspended from flight status due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet annual physical examination ... as ordered."

So we have a commander-in-chief that disobeyed a direct order from a superior. Hm. And then there's what the Boston Globe dug up earlier this week:

In another revelation, the Boston Globe this week reported that Mr. Bush promised to sign up with a Boston-area Guard unit when he left his Texas unit in 1973 to attend Harvard Business School. Mr. Bush never signed up with a Boston unit.

Bartlett claimed in 1999 that Mr. Bush had joined a Boston unit. Bartlett told the Globe this week that he "misspoke."

Hm, I call it something different than "I misspoke," something more like... "I lied."

Now here's the thing that shows you who this President and his surrogates really are. After the 60 Minutes piece ran, after claiming for months that they had released all relevant documents about Wrong's National Guard service, the White House quietly released a couple more documents, saying that "George W. Bush was suspended from flying fighter jets for failing to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard." That press release neglects the fact that the memo actually says that Bush was suspended for failing to meet his physical (after being ordered to do so). These memos from Lt. Killian (which you can get here) paint a pretty obvious picture: there's a punk kid who wants to get out of his service, a crusty old Lieutenant who doesn't want to let him, and a lot of behind-the-scenes string-pulling that will allow the young punk to get his way.

Does it have any place in this election campaign? Is it relevant? Well, we spent three weeks on Swift Boats, so I'm not about to cry for the President on this one. Fire, meet fire. You'll be fighting each other.