10-08-07, 9:13 am
While the number of victims among U.S. soldiers condemned by George W. Bush to die in Iraq continues to rise, the truth of the circumstances in which the president himself avoided being sent to the war on Vietnam, like thousands of young men of his generation, are still censored.
Circulating information on that issue in the run-up to the 2004 presidential elections cost CBS journalist and commentator Dan Rather years of humiliation. Rather has just filed a million-dollar claim against his former employer for having punished him in order to calm down the furious White House occupant.
At that time, Rather was forced by his bosses to apologize in the middle of the top U.S. news program for having “used apparently false documents” on the military service record of President George W. Bush during the war in Vietnam… although he knew perfectly well that they were authentic.
In an article just published on this controversy, Greg Palast, the British-based investigative journalist revealed how Bush’s notorious cowardice has been an open confirmed secret since 1999.
Palest recalls that on September 8, 2004, Rather presented his report in which he explained how in 1968, then Congressman George Bush – father of the current president – had arranged things so that his son was not called up for the war in Vietnam, as he should have been, but did his military service in an aviation unit of the National Guard. Something totally unusual when that military corps demanded of its pilots three years’ previous experience in a regular National Air Force unit.
George junior was thus spared from the war in order to defend Houston from a Vietcong attack, the journalist ironically commented.
Bush Sr. maneuvered that solution just 12 days before his son was to be formally recruited.
The BBC had disclosed that information one year previously, Palast noted, and never had to retract it.
23 MILLION TO SAVE HIS BOY
The BBC report, Palast says, was based on a confidential Justice Department document that states how Ben Barnes, lieutenant governor of Texas, who made the arrangements to have Bush junior removed from the U.S. Army registers, received his reward 35 years later.
In 1997, as governor of Texas, George W. Bush, acting irregularly, granted a state lottery contract worth more than one million dollars to a company linked to Barnes, who received a commission of $23 million.
Barnes confessed how, in 1968, he received a call from businessman Sid Adger, a buddy of the Bush family, asking him to do him the favor of moving Bush junior’s name up the waiting list for the National Guard. The current president has always falsely claimed that there was a shortage of candidates to join that military corps whose members are not usually deployed outside national territory.
Barnes then called General James Rose, the local National Guard commander, who sorted out “W”’s registration in a unit of the Ellington airbase where he hooked up with other daddies’ sons.
Bush rapidly rose to the rank of second lieutenant while his less privileged counterparts had to wait years to gain such recognition.
Bush always distinguished himself for his unjustified absences and delays in completing the tasks ascribed to him. Over time, he learned to pilot an F-102, an obsolete aircraft that was not even being used in the South East Asia conflict.
From Ellington, he asked for a transfer to Montgomery, Alabama, where he never showed up. But he was seen taking part in maneuvers surrounding the Senate electoral campaign of Winton “Red” Blount, a buddy in his clan. And enjoying himself at parties where his excessive inclination to alcohol could already be seen. Marijuana and cocaine consumption was in fashion then in get-togethers of moneyed youth and his former buddies have affirmed that the future president was happy to indulge in that pleasure.
A number of documents that would make it possible to confirm the activities or lack of activities of George W. Bush in the war years have mysteriously disappeared from the National Guard files.
In 1972 (the year of Watergate), “W”, then aged 26, decided to extract himself from the masquerade; as it happened, at a time when the National Guard began to impose doping tests. He was then assigned to civilian tasks in Denver where he never showed up.
Meanwhile, 58,000 compatriots of his age lost their lives in Vietnam, in another useless war of a decadent empire.
Despite his documented cowardice, Bush has never hesitated to show himself off in the same Air Force uniform worn by those who never returned from the conflict.
Just like now he is resolutely maintaining more than 150,000 young soldiers in Iraq. More than 3,800 have already died in this war of occupation and thousands have been mutilated… as have one million-plus Iraqis, victims of the lessons in ‘democracy’ of this Texan cowboy who was so afraid of war.
From Granma International
