A new angle on Bush's AWOL scandal...

[The Night Owl]

Republican talking heads have been holding up Bush's honorable discharge as proof that Bush has a clean military record. Their strategy seems to work well against the media, which mostly consists of media whores and empty suits like Jennings, Brokaw, and Russert.

I was wondering... Have there been any other known cases where honorable discharges were handed out to people who did not deserve honorable discharges?

In other words, if we can show that some honorable discharges have, in the past, been granted to people who did not deserve them, then we will have an easier time convincing people of the possibility that Bush did not earn his honorable discharge.

It is much easier to prove the existance of something that happened more than once than it is to prove the existance of something that happened only once.

[efhmc]

1. I am sure they either have something to uphold this or that they are in

the process of manufacturing it as we write.

[pinkpops]

2. Could be -

I never served, so have nohing to contribute.
Another angle would be for people who completed the guard to post their records to show what kind of documentation Bush should be able to produce.

[DemoTex]

3. An "Honorable Discharge" is not a Silver Star, or DFC, or CIB

Not to malign the Honorable Discharge, it is indeed the way you want to leave the service, but it was - then - more of a "didn't fuck-up too bad and step on dick and screw the Colonel's wife" type of thing. I knew some really shaky individuals who stayed in trouble, fucked-up and -off, got their share of Article 15s, and sailed into civiliandom with a crisp DD-214 that said "Honorable Discharge."

[tabasco]

4. That's right.

From my experience in the Army, you have to screw up pretty bad (serious UCMJ or court-martial)not to get an honorable. And it wouldn't be too hard for a powerful Daddy to get sonny an honorable when it really wasn't deserved. If a normal person just stopped showing up for drill, it is doubtful they would get an honorable.

[RobertSeattle]

5. It's virtually meaningless

I posted this true story earlier today:

When I was a LT in the Army, we had a E-6 come down positive for cocaine in the monthly drug test. He protested his innocence (of course they are all innocent). He was nearing his enlistment. My commander made a simple compromise with him: you don't re-up (end career), no charges pressed. Simple, done. The E-6 received an honorable discharge, left the army and got on with his civilian life without the nasty cocaine charge on his record.

Allegory to Bush's experience? I wouldn't know...

[RBitt]

8. Honorary Discharge

is what one Bush lackey called it on Inside Politics today, Judy Whitewash let it go....

[Jack Rabbit]

6. Any other known cases?

Have there been any other known cases where honorable discharges were handed out to people who did not deserve honorable discharges?

There probably have been, but none of the others were later to live in the White House.

National Guard units during the Vietnam Era were full of the sons of privilege like Bush. He's not the only spoiled brat to come out of American high society and think that the world owes him a living on a gold platter.

[DemoTex]

12. Lookit. When I got off active duty in 1972 I moved to Auburn, Ala.

I had a pad. A rent house. It was fairly famous for - well, er - parties. I was making up for lost time. Lotsa comely coeds, lotsa beer, my bodacious stereo system from PACEX, and an occasional whiff of noxious weed from a back room (not me, I tell you!).

A few guardsmen (straight-leg Army guard) from the Auburn unit, guys I had known before I got drafted, started hanging out at my place on drill weekends. They would pull up in M1A1-A Jeeps at 7 am, help me cook bacon and eggs, and wash their breakfast down with cold beer. They would hang out all weekend, drinking and smoking pot. The guard was stifling for them. They hated it. They would weave back to the Armory for formations and roll-calls, otherwise they did nothing.

They all did their time and mustered out with Honorable Discharges and fatty livers. Two were former gridiron greats at Auburn. God, their girlfriends loved me when those boys got drunk (which was most of the time). I cooked gumbo, sipped beer, and took care of the ladies when their PFCs and Eltees bit the dust early in the evenings.

[K8-EEE]

14. Yeow!!

TX Dem you were takin' care of the Guards' ladies while they were passed out??

Gumbo too?

Bacon, eggs and beer?

Thanks for the interesting read I guess is what I mean to say, LOL!

[Elwood P Dowd]

16. I remember those days

Use to visit my old friends in Auburn all the time after I got out of the Army in 72. I remember a football game against Georgia Tech where we were passing around a bong, and a cop looking at us just kept shaking his head. Do that today, and the cops will take you away.

[Johnyawl]

17. Damn, Mac...

I wish I'd known you in those days! I had a little lost time to make up myself.

[cheapbeemr]

7. He got out of the Guard the same way he got in

with his Daddy's connections. Honorable Discharge is a piece of paper that can be bought by certain people like anything else......

[salin]

9. and the way he got to lob off part of the term to go to Harvard

and the way he got six months to go to alabama to work a political campaign... going all the way back to getting in (launching ahead of others on the waitlist)... and getting a pilot slot with the lowest minimum score on the test ... all because he was a congressman's son.

[RBitt]

10. Dan Quail too...

while lots of kids getting shot at, pointed a gun at kids at demonstrations, and they want to question Kerry? can't wait. I for one am proud of my draft dodging, earned to coveted 4F while trying to get into the Coast Guard. Three year wait in '71.

[UTUSN]

11. Great Salon Article Explains It

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/05/national_guard/

Basically, it says that the Uniform Code of Military Justice applies to active duty and that it would take criminal charges to get something less than Honorable, that the UCMJ kicks in when you're active and when you're not present you aren't covered by it, that the individual states mirror the UCMJ for their individual Guard jurisdictions-------or something like that. Wingnuts like Fred BARNES are marginalizing the issue by reducing it to "missing a few meetings."

[fleetus]

13. You can infer things from Dishonorable Discharge.

With a dishonorable, there will be something specific tarnishing your service.

Besides administrative separation, everyone else gets honorable discharge. You can't infer much from an honorable discharge other than the National Guard wasn't trying to totally screw him on the way out.

From my experience, everything in military law is negotiable to some point. Example: drug use (now) is advertised as a guaranteed out with dishonorable discharge. But there are people who got a positive on their drug test who were given a "second chance." Although being AWOL could probably be grounds for a dishonorable discharge if they wanted to bring it too that level, an honorable discharge does not mean he wasn't AWOL. It just means that if he was AWOL, someone decided not to prosecute it to that extent. Which would not be unheard of... _at all_.

Sort of like if you broke into someones house and they didn't press charges. Maybe because you apologized and they bought it. Or your Dad apologized on your behalf. You're not on record as a criminal, but you still broke into someone's house.

[rocktivity]

15. What other politicians have not made their military histories public?

I thought it was standard operating procedure. THAT'S what we really need to know--why hasn't Bush produced his miltary records? Even if he could do so to prove that he had served honorably, he would then have to explain why he's kept his records a secret all his military life!!!


rocknation

[stopbush]

18. I think the point is that an HD doesn't erase an AWOL or mean

that an AWOL never happened.

This repig diversionary tactic is meant to fool people into thinking that if bush got an honorable discharge, he must NOT have gone AWOL. But the fact is that bush could have gone AWOL, been cited for it, and made amends, either by doing jail time or making up the time he lost, and still received an honorable discharge at the end of the service period.

So, the honorable discharge is a red herring. The real questions remain:

1. did he go AWOL
2. if so, what did or didn't he do to make it up
3. why isn't the AWOL on his record - why does it appear his records were scrubbed

bush could answer all of this by asking the NG to release his records publicly. Either he's got something to hide, or, he knows that the Dems are playing with a loaded gun. He may be playing rope-a-dope, waiting for Kerry or another high-placed Dem to use the wrong words (like "deserter") publicly and then pulling a gotcha by releasing the records that would fully exonerate him.