corrente

Hodges has said that he doesn't recall Bush ever showing up at Ellington AFB in the summer of 1973.

"If [Bush] had come back to Houston, I would have kept him flying the 102 until he got out," said Hodges, a Bush admirer. "But I don't recall him coming back at all." - Boston Globe, July 28, 2000

Yet the Killian memo of June 24, 73 would suggest that Bush did show up at Ellington. Bobby Hodges now claims that he believes the Killian memo is a forgery. Does Hodges still stand by his claim that Bush never showed up at Ellington in 73?

Paul Lukasiak at the AWOL Project has the details:

THE TRUTH TRAP - THE QUESTIONS THAT THE WHITE HOUSE CANNOT ANSWER

We now know that Bush was paid for training on forty separate days in April, May, June, and July, 1973. Eight of those days (April 7 & 8, May 19 & 20, June 23 & 24, and July 21 &22) were "Unit Training Assembly weekends", the days that Bush’s entire unit was required to show up for the statutorily mandated periods of "drill and instruction." Yet, to date, no one remembers seeing Bush train at Ellington Air Force Base after he returned to Texas after the election in 1972.

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In fact, the only evidence that supports the White House claim that Bush did really show up appears in a June 24, 1973 memo recently released by USA Today, in which Jerry Killian says that [he] cannot use Bush's "recent activity" to provide a rating for Bush on his annual Officer Effectiveness Training Report because that activity "is outside the rating period" (May 1, 1972-April 30, 1973.)

RE:CBS memo / Jerry Killian / June 24, 1973

2. Neither Lt. Colonel Harris or I feel we can rate 1st Lt. Bush since he was not training with 111F.1.S since April, 1972. His recent activity is outside the rating period. - Jerry B. Killian June 24, 1973

Does the White House think that this document is genuine, and provides the proof it needs to show that Bush did show up for training in May, June, and July of 1973 at Ellington Air Force base? Does the White House think that Bobby Hodges and Rufus Martin were lying to the Boston Globe in 2000, when they explained that the reason Bush hadn't regained his flight status was because Bush never returned to Ellington Air Force base to train? Will Bobby Hodges retract another one of his statements, like he did with regard to the authenticity of the memos released by CBS, and suddenly "remember" that Bush did come back to Ellington to train? Or does Hodges maintain the position that the documents are forgeries, and that Killian’s mention of "recent activity" proves it, because Bush never returned to Ellington for training? - [ Paul Lukasiak - The Truth Trap]

The AWOL Project Mainpage

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MORE related:

Via Democrats.com

TOPIC: Bush's roommate says Bush did NOT "fulfill his obligations as a pilot"!

In a 2002 interview with USA TODAY, Dean Roome, a former fighter pilot who lived with Bush in the early 1970s, said that during the first part of Bush's pilot service, he was a model officer. But he described Bush's Air Guard career as 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."

UK Guardian:

Bush Piloted Guard Training Jets
The White House said it cannot explain the changes in Bush's official flight logs

Daily News:

President Bush' former Harvard Business School prof says his ex-student supported the Vietnam War but wanted somebody else to fight it.

[...]

Bush, according to Tsurumi, "had no sense of guilt" about getting into the Guard while others wound up fighting in Vietnam.

"He was very casual about it," the professor said. "I said, 'Lucky you, how did you manage it?' He said, 'My dad had a good friend who put me at the head of the waiting list.'"

Related Updates: Thanks to Peanut at Daily Beast and Bob Fertik. See: Bob Fertik.com and Democrats.com

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