Saturday, August 29, 2009

Someone tell Dan Rather that clairvoyance is not a "source"

The hat tip for this one goes to Roger H via this tweet. Get this: it turns out that not only did former President George W. Bush not dodge going to Vietnam, but he volunteered to go! However at that time he was 200 hours short on experience so he was not able to under the military regulations. Here's the pertinent excerpt:

Retired Col. Ed Morrisey, the man who swore Bush into the Guard, told CBS affiliate WVLT in Knoxville, Tenn., a different story. "The Air Force, in their ultimate wisdom, assembled a group of F-102s and took them to Southeast Asia. Bush volunteered to go. But he needed to have 500 (flight) hours, but he had just over 300 hours, so he wasn't able to go," Morrisey said.

Fact is, Bush enlisted as an airman basic in the 147th Fighter-Interceptor Group at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston on May 28, 1968 — when the 147th was participating in combat in Vietnam. From 1968 through 1970, pilots from the 147th participated in operation Palace Alert.

The F-102 Bush flew was designed primarily for defense against the threat of Soviet bombers, and units charged with this task were the best of the best. Only a return of his unit's mission to continental air defense before Bush completed his flight training made it unlikely he'd fly in combat. Bush avoided nothing.

The heart of the Mapes-Rather hatchet job was that Bush was a coward who avoided action in Vietnam. That was false, and CBS' own report on the matter shows that Mapes knew it was false.

Hey, maybe someone should tell Dan Rather! Forget it—that jerk knew.

Glad this article wasn't written using Microsoft word—that weird little "th" character screws up the blog for some web browsers.

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