In light of the Richard Blumenthal controversy in Connecticut, sparked by the New York Times' reporting, it might be worth recalling when a young, rising star in the Republican Party once exaggerated his time in the military [emphasis added]:

Of course none of that stopped Bush from hyping his military service as he launched his political career. In 1978, during an unsuccessful run for Congress in west Texas, Bush produced campaign literature that claimed he had served “in the US Air Force and the Texas Air National Guard.” In 1999, when asked by an AP reporter why Bush had claimed to have served specifically with the U.S. Air Force when he'd only been in the National Guard, Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes insisted the claim was accurate because when Bush attended flight school for the Air National Guard he was considered to be on active duty for the Air Force. That was plainly false, as the AP noted, citing Air Force policy, which stated Guardsmen are never considered to be members of the Air Force active duty.

Also, it might be worth remembering how the same New York Times failed to cover questions about Bush's military service when later they surfaced in 2000:

The Bush National Guard story was born and bred in Old Media; on the front page of The Boston Globe, May 23, 2000, to be exact. After combing through 160 pages of military documents and interviewing Bush's former commanders (every quote in the story was on-the-record), reporter Walter Robinson detailed how Bush's flying career came to an abrupt and unexplained end in the spring of 1972 when Bush asked to be transferred from his Texas unit to an Alabama unit so he could work on a Senate campaign there. But Bush did not show up for drills in Alabama and by most indications never returned to serve with his Texas unit either. He simply walked away from his military obligation with nearly two years still remaining. The press corps remained nonplussed. During the 2000 campaign The New York Times published just two references to the Globe investigation into Bush's often no-show Guard service.