corrente

And I was wondering which story the malAdministration would try to bury by releasing on a Friday, when all the bloggers are out partying ....

But we'll see about "all"... Why, after all, would we believe them?

Anyhow, Reuters:

President Bush, trying to stamp out a political firestorm, released all his National Guard files during the Vietnam War on Friday to answer election-year charges from Democrats that he shirked his duty.

And it would have been so simple to do this right away ...

White House officials handed out thick packets containing hundreds of pages of documents retrieved from a National Guard records center in Denver. A group of reporters was given 20 minutes to review dozens of pages detailing Bush's medical exams during his service.

So wait a minute. Were the medical records part of the packets, or not? [No; see Update below].

The documents offered no new evidence to place Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972, the period when Democrats claim he was basically absent without leave.

The new stack included an evaluation form from his Texas unit that said he could not be evaluated because "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report."

A Sept. 29, 1972, document from Maj. Gen. Francis Greenlief, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said on "verbal orders" of the commander, Bush was suspended from flying status. "Reason for suspension: Failure to accomplish annual medical examination."

White House communications director Dan Bartlett said Bush did not take the physical because he was going to be doing Guard duty that did not involve flying so there was no need to take the exam.

Hmmm.... So which was cause, and which was effect? Did Bush (a) stop flying because he would have had to take a medical exam (which would have involved a drug test), or did (b) he not take the medical exam because he wasn't going to fly? My money's on (a), just because (b) makes no sense. I mean, we spend a million bucks training Bush to fly, and then send him off to push paper?

Maybe now that the preliminaries are over with, and Bush as "showed his hand" as it were, we can get the real story—why was Bush grounded?

UPDATE No, the medical records were not distributed. Interesting.... AP:

Bush's medical records, dozens of pages in all, were opened for examination by reporters in the Roosevelt Room, but those documents [the medical records] were not allowed to leave the room.

Well, this technique worked with the 9/11 commission...

UPDATE WaPo has a nice collage. Bush makes a great initial impression, screws up more and more, then has to blow town. We hope this is a continuing pattern...

UPDATE Elizabeth Bumiller from The Times focuses on the media angle:

The White House released the documents with little advance notice at 6:30 p.m. after much of the staff had left for a long holiday weekend. It seemed to be as much an effort at public relations as an attempt to quiet Mr. Bush's critics, at least temporarily, by demonstrating the president's willingness to be open about his military service.

the White House went back and forth all week on how many of Mr. Bush's National Guard documents it would release. In an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Mr. Bush promised that he would release his entire military file, but Mr. Bush's aides backed off that pledge this week, saying that Mr. Bush would only make public those documents "relevant" to his service.

They moved Friday night to end the dispute by releasing all the documents, which they said had only arrived in Washington on Friday afternoon from a National Guard personnel records center in Denver.

"This is absolutely everything," Mr. Bartlett told reporters.

Heh heh. We aleady know what "absolutely" means in GeorgeLand (back)....