Jenise R. DePinto - 2/27/2004

Below is an excerpt from The Nation online:

Tim Russert: You didn't volunteer or enlist to go [to Vietnam].

President Bush: No, I didn't. You're right. -- from "Meet the Press," February 8, 2004.

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Marc Racicot (it's pronounced RAS-ko), the chairman of the Bush- Cheney 2004 election campaign, was interviewed this week on NPR (you can listen to it here). Asked how the Vietnam-era records of John Kerry and George W. Bush compare, Racicot said in part: "The President served this country very honorably too. He signed up for dangerous duty. He volunteered to go to Vietnam -- he wasn't selected to go, but nonetheless served his country very well."

Bush volunteered for 'Nam?

Not quite, as Bush had personally made clear two weeks earlier on "Meet the Press."

What Bush does say is that, once in the Guard and trained on fighter jets, he expressed an interest in volunteering to fly in the war. In his autobiography "A Charge to Keep," for example, he writes:

"Several of my fellow pilots had participated in a program known as 'Palace Alert,' which rotated Guard pilots into Vietnam to relieve active- duty pilots. [The Washington Post reports more precisely that 'Palace Alert' sent Guard pilots "to Europe and the Far East, occasionally to Vietnam, on three- to six-month assignments."] A friend and fellow pilot, Fred Bradley, and I were interested in participating and we talked to Col. Jerry Killian about it. He told us the program was being phased out, that a few more pilots would go, but that Fred and I had not logged enough flight hours to participate."

Now, is there anything dishonorable in this? Not in the least. Is there any reason to doubt it's 100% true? Not that I can see. After all, very few healthy men in their twenties who are already flying military jets, upon hearing of a gig flying those same jets abroad in a war zone, would not ask for the scoop and think about participating.

So what's irritating is not what Bush did then -- not at all. What's irritating is that, thirty years on, he has people out there like Racicot -- well-known, by the way, as a shill for Enron -- changing the story to make it sound better. "He volunteered to go to Vietnam -- he wasn't selected."

House Republican chief Tom DeLay once claimed that greedy minorities had taken up all of the spaces and there was no room for whites to volunteer. But I think we all know that if either Tom DeLay or George Bush had really wanted to go to Vietnam, they could have. And if I got credit for doing everything I'd ever expressed an interest in doing, well, they'd be making action- figures out of me, too.

* * *

Racicot also asserts to NPR that Senator Kerry is inconsistent in his voting habits. For example, Racicot says: "[Kerry] voted for the use of force in Iraq, and then refused to authorize funds to provide everything from body armor to better medical treatment for the troops."

Now as Racicot surely knows, when the President proposed $87.5 billion in additional war spending, what attracted the ire of Kerry and others -- including rebellious Republican Senators -- was that some $20 billion of that was for "reconstruction" projects. These included, to cite some lurid examples, $9 million to establish Iraqi zip codes, $100 million to buy the Iraqis trash trucks and $400 million to build state-of-the art jails. Oh, and $100 million for bequeathing to the Iraqis, by end of 2004, a Pentagon-created "world-class newspaper." Oh, and the President's $87.5 billion grab-bag included something totally non-negotiable for the Republicans: Provisions sponsored by Democrats to prevent war profiteering, like Halliburton's price- gouging at the pump, simply had to go.

Which reminds me: Kerry voted against better medical treatment for the troops?

It was the White House that formally opposed giving National Guard and Reserve members access to the Pentagon's health insurance system. A proposal to let them buy health coverage through the Pentagon like other soldiers was stripped -- at White House insistence -- out of Bush's $87.5 billion Iraq wish list.

Why? Because, the Administration explained then, that kinda health care for soldiers -- why, it could cost $400 million a year!

Meanwhile, the same bill -- also stripped, at Republican insistence, of its anti-war-profiteering language -- would go on to spend about $339 million just on the overcharges for gasoline by Halliburton.

So $400 million spent on health care for soldiers is a waste of good money, but when that amount is price-gouged by the Vice President's old company, the Republican leadership in Congress must rise up to protect that practice. Hmm. It's a good thing for Bush-Cheney they've got a former Enron lobbyist at the helm; no one else would be able to swallow their shame.