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Thursday, September 16, 2004

To Err is Human, to Forgive, Divine
Posted by Jill | 1:28 PM
It occurs to me that George W. Bush could put the whole issue of the CBS Killian memos, his Texas Air National Guard Service, the whole mess, to bed by Just Coming Clean. As Kevin Drum points out:


...even if they're real they don't really add much to the story. After all, here's what we already know:

Former Texas Speaker of the House Ben Barnes pulled strings in 1968 to get George Bush into the National Guard so that he could avoid the draft. This isn't something Barnes just cooked up recently for Dan Rather, either. He testified under oath about it five years ago.

In early 1972, with two years still left on Bush's Guard commitment, something happened. Nobody knows what happened, but for some reason he started flying again in training jets that he had graduated from two years previously; he began putting in simulator time; he had trouble making landings; and in April 1972 he made his last flight. He then refused to take his required annual physical and was subsequently grounded.

In May 1972, Bush left for Alabama and disappeared from the Guard. He showed up for no drills for the next five months, and, contrary to White House statements, he never made up these missed drills.

Bush returned to Texas in late 1972, but in May 1973 his superior officers in Houston (one of whom was the now famous Jerry Killian) refused to rate Bush, saying he "has not been observed at this unit" for the past 12 months.


That there's something fishy about Bush's TANG service is pretty irrefutable, regardless of whether the CBS memos are real, forgeries, later typings of Killian's opinions by himself or someone else, or whatever. It's pretty clear that something happened to cause his performance to go rapidly downhill in early 1972. Was it drugs? Was it, as this poster at Daily Kos says, because he was distraught about his girlfriend Robin Lowman's abortion? Was it simply drinking?

Regardless of the reason, this White House is so secretive and has such a siege mentality, despite the free pass the press has given them, they can't even see that there's a good 30-35% of Americans who would forgive him for anything he did, even if it involved buggering little boys in the choirloft, then murdering them, then eating the remains with fava beans and a nice chianti. There's probably another 15-25% who are willing to forgive a truly repentant sinner. After all, who among us hasn't screwed up at sometime in our lives?

While Bush doesn't identify himself as an alcoholic, you don't have to be a genius to know that this is a guy who at the very LEAST had a serious alcohol problem. He claims to have found Jesus and stopped drinking. Whether this makes him a dry drunk by 12-step standards is immaterial. Let's just for a minute take the Bush Conversion Mythos at face value and pretend it's for real. If Bush were to get up there and acknowledge:

1) Yes, my daddy's friends got me into the National Guard. Yes, I was given preference over other people because of family connections.

2) Yes, I screwed up during that time. Like so many people of my generation, I got into trouble with substance abuse [no need to go into details here]. I never completed my service in Alabama. I did not register in Massachusetts as I was supposed to. I was young and arrogant and I believed the rules didn't apply to me. I was an embarrassment to my family and my unit. For those things, I am truly and deeply sorry. I am thankful to my family -- my wife Laura and my parents for sticking by me during that time, and I am thankful to the Lord for saving me [no one would gripe about him talking about that here] from myself. Since that time, I have tried to live my life in an upstanding way.

...etc.

The problem for people like me would be that it doesn't change the fact that here is someone who supported a war but refused to serve, who has been cavalier about sending other people's children off to die in a misguided war of his own creation. If he had done this BEFORE the Iraq war, even I would have forgiven him. It was a screwy time and anyone who could get out of going to Vietnam, did get out of it. But even now, I believe that there are enough people who would forgive him that he could put the whole issue to rest in about fifteen minutes. And he might even get a few people who are bothered by his smirking, arrogant air of entitlement to change their minds. Not me, but enough to possibly make a difference.

After all, it's not the drugs and/or the abortion and/or the booze and/or the string-pulling, it's the lying, right?
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