corrente

I hate, again, to interrupt the massive winger circle-jerk on the CBS memos—SCLM newsgathering sloppy! Film at 11—but duty compels me to remind them that everything in the memos is already attested to by independent sources that the wingers do not dispute.

Here's how that well-known liberal organ, the Air Force Times, describes Bush's tour of, um, duty:

From most accounts, Bush appears to have received preferential treatment to get into the Air National Guard and avoid the draft after he graduated from Yale University in 1968. He was initially regarded as a good pilot, but his performance faded over his final two years in the Guard and he was suspended from flight status. He did not fly for the remaining 18 months he served in the Guard, though he was obligated to do so.

And for significant chunks of time, Bush did not report for duty at all. His superiors took no action, and he was honorably discharged in 1973, six months before he should have been.

In a 2002 interview with USA Today, Dean Roome, a former fighter pilot who lived with Bush in the early 1970s, said Bush was a model officer during the first part of his career. But overall, he said, Bush’s Air Guard career was erratic — the first three years solid, the last two troubled.

“You wonder if you know who George Bush is,” Roome said. “I think he digressed after a while. In the first half, he was gung-ho. Where George failed was to fulfill his obligation as a pilot. It was an irrational time in his life.”

Bush’s performance slipped. The descent began when Bush apparently did not follow an order to report for his annual flight physical in May 1972, which got him grounded
(via Air Force Times)

Plus all the usual detail you know about if you've been following the story at all.

Roome is wrong about one thing though—we don't wonder who Bush is; we know.