Joe Conason: Bush lied about his military service, and so did Reagan

[babylonsister]

Bush lied about his military service, and so did Reagan
Bush's account of his Guard service and Reagan's story of the Nazi death camp were huge lies -- but never big news
By Joe Conason


Richard Blumenthal's apparent misstatements about his military service -- as reported so tendentiously in the New York Times -- have delighted Republicans who once considered the Connecticut attorney general unbeatable in his state's U.S. Senate race. Now that we know the videotape cited by the Times also includes Blumenthal accurately describing his service in the Marine Corps Reserve, their jubilation may be premature. Whatever the ultimate verdict on the Blumenthal story, however, it's worth noting that he was hardly alone in misstating -- or falsely recollecting -- the facts about his stint in uniform. Leaving aside Lindsey Graham, who has puffed his "wartime" service for years, such mythmaking is indeed characteristic of the politicians most revered by the GOP.

Take George W. Bush, whose controversial service as a Texas Air National Guard pilot was shrouded in mystery, evidently because he wanted to conceal the basic facts of his privileged admission to the TANG and his strange departure from its ranks. In his 2000 campaign autobiography, ghosted by Karen Hughes, Bush claimed that after completing his training in the F-102 fighter plane, "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years." That simple sentence was entirely untrue, according to records eventually released by the Bush campaign, which showed that he had never flown in uniform again after his suspension from active duty in August 1972 for failing to show up for a mandatory physical examination.

In the same book Bush also suggests that he tried to volunteer for service in Vietnam "to relieve active duty pilots" fighting the war. But, of course, the entire purpose of his privileged (and questionable) enlistment in the TANG was to avoid the Vietnam draft, as he hinted in a 1998 newspaper interview when he said: "I don't want to play like I was somebody out there marching when I wasn't. It was either Canada or the service and I was headed into the service." Two years later, under the tutelage of Hughes, that momentary candor evaporated.

Yet Bush's self-serving revisions cannot compare with the fantastic recollections of the late Ronald Reagan, whose veneration by Republicans was never diminished by his bizarre utterances. In November 1983, he told Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir during a White House visit that while serving in the U. S. Army film corps, his unit had shot footage of the Nazi concentration camps as they were liberated. He repeated the same tale to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and other witnesses. Reagan had indeed served in the Army and worked on morale-boosting movies for the War Department. But he had done so without ever leaving Hollywood for the entire duration of the war.

more...

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2010/05/20/bushreagan

[Enthusiast]

1. Typical RW hypocrisy.

Chickenhawks one and all.

[RC]

2. The are reality challenged. The Right has a mental disorder and should be barred from serving in

public office.

[Scuba]

3. When yuu own the media, you get to decide what is reality.

[Raster]

4. Whomever controls the messenger, controls the message.

This premise has been imminently successful for the Machine.

[Demeter]

5. Perfectly Understandable. Both Men Were Mentally Defective

or "reality-challenged" if we are going to go all euphemistic here. And then to top it off, they were morally defective, as well, so there was no natural restraint on their mental error....and too many people were willing to exploit them and their undeserved power for crass and treasonous ends, and cover up any public flaws with intensive hand waving.

[Hawkowl]

6. Sociopaths

That is what they are.