Lookit them files.
Well, Bush finally released a pile of files to try to dispell rumors that he did not fulfill his duties in the Air National Guard. They show he was paid for the period in question, but not that he ever really did what he was supposed to do. But it’s not surprising I feel that way:
[ White House communications director Dan Bartlett ] said the pay and duty records show Bush fulfilled his obligation. “Anyone who says otherwise is more interested in partisan conspiracy theories than getting to the truth,” he said. Bartlett said he does not expect Democrats to be satisfied because “their interest was never to find the facts.” Many Gaps In Bush’s Guard Records ]
Have you noticed that any accusasion that someone in this administration ever did anything wrong—like shirking Guard duty—is labeled a “conspiracy theory”? My, but we have pulled the bar low. Jack Kennedy killed by the mafia? Practically fact. Clinton directing secret CIA cocaine-smugging operations out of Arkansas? Read it in the Wall Street Journal!
A rich young college student decides he has better things to do than fly obsolete aircraft and blows off duty? Woah! Break out the tin-foil hats, dude! I’m not saying you’re crazy, man, but you better come back here and join us on Planet Reality, because that is some major whacked-out conspiracy theory shit.
All the pay stubs prove is that Bush was paid for a period of time no one can account for. Bush says he was there, no-one else seems to have seen him. If someone had been murdered, I assure you the defense would not hesitate to claim that pay stubs were insufficient to place Mr. Bush at the scene of the crime, and they would be right.
What was Bush doing? Snorting coke with Jane Fonda? Playing hired gun to the oil industry, taking out alternative-fuel researchers? Putting itching powder in Ralph Nader’s drawers? We don’t know. And that way (perhaps) lies partisan conspiracy theory.
But claiming pay stubs prove he did his job? That’s not fact, that’s stand-up.
