Salon: Lousy Investment (Bush*s TANG flight training)

[kskiska]

In a 1968 contract, just made public, Bush agreed to serve as a pilot for five years. But he failed to fulfill that commitment -- wasting the money the Guard spent to train him.

(snip)

Upon joining the Guard, Bush agreed in writing to maintain satisfactory participation with his Guard unit for six years, until May 1974. In exchange for his service, he would be freed from active-duty status and from serving in Vietnam. That commitment has been made public. At the same time, however, Bush, who was accepted for Guard pilot training, signed an additional document in which he acknowledged the large financial investment the Guard was making in him. He agreed to serve for five years with his parent unit after he earned his wings, or completed his "undergraduate pilot training." That document has just now come to light.

The 1968 "Agreement," as the contract is titled, did not specify what qualified as completion of "undergraduate pilot training." What is known is that Bush completed his initial training at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia on Nov. 26, 1969, and his final F-102 training on June 20, 1970. Depending on which qualified as "undergraduate pilot training," Bush's five-year pilot commitment with his parent unit would have ended in either November 1974 or May 1975.

(snip)

The document was discovered by Philadelphia researcher Paul Lukasiak, who has been analyzing and writing extensively about Bush's military records since February, when the White House, under pressure to explain the gaps in Bush's Guard service, released what it said was "absolutely everything" in the president's military file. The "Agreement" was not part of that document dump, even though another document released the same day referred to a "five-year commitment" Bush had signed upon joining the Guard. (The "Preview and Grade Determination," dated May 29, 1968, listed among the attachments included in Bush's enrollment form an "AF Form 125 (includes 5 yr agreement)." An AF Form 125 was among the documents released by the White House, but it did not spell out a five-year agreement.

Lukasiak believes that reporters should have demanded release of the "5 yr agreement" document over the past six months, and since they did not, he opted to release the "Agreement." He will not comment on where or when he got the document, but insists "the provenance is impeccable." Upon examination, the "Agreement" does not raise any of the typographical issues that occurred with the Guard-related memos CBS aired last week, such as proportional spacing or use of a superscript. It looks identical to all the other documents from that period released by the White House.

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/16/bush_guard_record/index.html

[Bozita]

1. Finally an article referring to the theft of taxpayer money ... AKA "your

... money."

This is a 5 star article, well worth the brief inconvenience of viewing an ad.