How Bush Got (and Lost) His Wings
Tracking the National Guard Career of the Fatuous Flyboy from New HavenBy JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
SNIP
In April of 1972, two important events coincide. The Air Force mandates drug testing for all pilots during medical exams and Bush takes what will turn out to be his last flight as a pilot for the Air National Guard.
Less than a month later, Bush flees his Texas Guard base for Alabama, where he signs up to work on the congressional campaign of Winton "Red" Blount, a friend of Bush's father and Nixon's postmaster general. He didn't inform his superiors at Ellington that he had left Texas until two weeks later, when he requested a transfer to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron, a postal unit with no fighter jets. Initially, the transfer is granted.
No one recalls seeing Bush report for duty and there is no documentary record supporting his service there, which, in any event, was to consist primarily of reading flight manuals--an uninviting assignment for the quasi-literate airman. On July 6, Bush is scheduled to take his required flight physical, which will for the first time include a drug test. He fails to show up. Failure to take a flight physical is grounds for immediate suspension of his pilot's license.
These days Bush claims that he simply blew off the physical because the Guard was phasing out the F-102 and he didn't expect to be piloting any more flights. This excuse is circumspect for two reasons. First, although the F-102 was on its way out, the jet had not yet been mothballed and Bush still had the opportunity to learn to fly the new generation of fighter jets. Indeed, there was a fleet of them just down the highway at Dannelly Air Base in Alabama. Moreover, the flight physical was a mandatory requirement of service. This was not a matter of getting a permission slip to play intramural polo at Yale. For most Guardsmen, failure to abide by such orders resulted severe consequences, like being compelled to spend two-years in active duty, perhaps in Vietnam.
SNIP
Just as he stiffed the Flight Evaluation Board in 1972, Bush now refuses to offer an explanation for his illegal and unjust war that has killed and maimed tens of thousands. "I'm the commander--see, I don't need to explain," Bush brayed in his best Mafia capo syntax to Bob Woodward. "I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel I owe anybody an explanation." That's the distilled essence of George W. Bush from his very own mouth: a bellicose and imperious buffoon who has never once been held to account for the mayhem he leaves in his wake.
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair08122004.html
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