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

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Amerigo Vespucci Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-24-10 09:12 PM
Original message
Joe Conason, Salon, on BlumenthalGate: Bush lied about his military service, and so did Reagan
Thursday, May 20, 2010 18:21 ET

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

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



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.
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SpiralHawk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-24-10 09:14 PM
Response to Original message
1. "Smirk." - xCommander AWOL (R)
Edited on Mon May-24-10 09:15 PM by SpiralHawk
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mitchtv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-24-10 09:53 PM
Response to Original message
2. I seem to remember the head of the American Legion
confusing VN era with VN war. Anyone else
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elocs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-24-10 09:57 PM
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3. Lying about your military service is wrong no matter who does it.
It cannot be justified by claiming that someone else did it too.

Anyone ever have a kid who tried to justify misbehavior by claiming other kids did it too? Same concept. Stupid. If we don't buy it when our kids try and pull that old song and dance, we shouldn't accept it from adults either.

If Blumenthal's misstatements about his military service were only "apparent", then why did he apologize for them? Would we call what Bush said or what was said about his military service simply "misstatements"? Or are they just misstatements when Democrats tell them, but lies when they come from Republicans.
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daleo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-24-10 10:11 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. It's not wrong if you are a Republican
That's the thing.
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elocs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-25-10 02:32 AM
Response to Reply #4
5. They don't think it is wrong, but we know it is
and using their lies as justification for when a Democrat does it is childish.
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Scurrilous Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-25-10 03:29 PM
Response to Original message
6. K & R
:thumbsup:
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