As new evidence emerges that President George W. Bush did not complete his Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard and that he benefited from his status as the son of a powerful, well-connected family in order to gain a coveted position in the Guard, members of the media have employed several defenses in an effort to refute that evidence. None of these defenses stand up to scrutiny.

FALSE DEFENSE #1: Bush received an honorable discharge

The principal response from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to criticism of President Bush's military service record has been to point out repeatedly that Bush received an honorable discharge from the National Guard. Though a February article (subscription required) in The New Republic debunked the idea that an honorable discharge necessarily demonstrates a fulfillment of one's service obligations (as Media Matters for America has noted), members of the media have nonetheless eagerly adopted this mantra:

FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly: "[H]e [President Bush] got an honorable discharge and he said he was proud of his service. You know, what's -- why bother with this?" [FOX News Channel, The O'Reilly Factor, 9/8/04]

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer: “Here's the bottom line, though. The president did get an honorable discharge from the Air National Guard from his military service.” [CNN, News from CNN, 9/8/04]

FOX News Channel and ABC Radio Networks host Sean Hannity: "[W]e do know in fact that he was honorably discharged and placed on inactive Ready Reserve." [FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, 9/8/04]

FOX News Channel host Steve Doocy: “Well, as the White House points out the president did receive an honorable discharge.” [FOX News Channel, FOX & Friends, 9/9/04]

Moreover, CBS News recently obtained a memo from the personal files of Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, Bush's squadron commander during his time in the National Guard. According to the memo, Killian said he was pressured to “sugar coat” his evaluation of then-Lieutenant Bush.

FALSE DEFENSE #2: Ben Barnes is a liar

On the September 8 broadcast of CBS's 60 Minutes, former Texas House speaker and Lt. Governor Ben Barnes told anchor Dan Rather that as House speaker in 1968, he recommended Bush for the Guard to his “longtime friend” Brigadier General James Rose, the head of the Texas Air National Guard. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, a September 7 memo to GOP leaders by Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie sought to portray Barnes as an unreliable witness, claiming falsely that Barnes' recent statements contradict sworn testimony in 1999 in which Barnes said he had not acted at the behest of the Bush family. Conservative reporters and commentators have repeated this false claim:

• Radio host Rush Limbaugh: Under oath, Ben Barnes testified that he had no contact with the Bush family concerning the National Guard. Changing his story now, claiming he was paid off and pressured by the Bush family via a surrogate to keep quiet. [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 9/8/04]
• Sean Hannity: Here's this guy, Barnes, who is now saying basically that he, uh, gave favorable treatment to the President back -- back in the Vietnam days. That's what he's saying. OK. Well, under oath in 1999, he testified he had no contact with the Bush family concerning the National Guard. He was the Speaker of the Texas House in 1999 and he said at the time that, uh, he had spoken to the head of the Texas National Guard on President Bush's behalf. He had not had any contact with anyone in the Bush family. But now he's saying something different. [ABC Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 9/8/04]
• Jim Angle, FOX News Channel White House correspondent, repeated misleading White House claims without challenge:
  

  ANGLE: A former prominent Texas politician will be on 60 Minutes tonight, making charges he first made in 1999 and repeated several months ago to a group of volunteers called Austin for Kerry.

  [clip of Barnes]

  The White House says Barnes's charges are not only recycled, but that Barnes himself has previously said no one in the Bush family asked him for help.

In fact, Barnes has been entirely consistent on this issue. He said the same thing in 1999 and on 60 Minutes: that he called Rose at the behest of Houston oilman Sidney A. Adger, a friend of the Bush family who is now dead.

FALSE DEFENSE #3: Bush wasn't obligated to serve in Boston

On September 8, The Boston Globe discovered a document Bush signed on July 30, 1973, that stated, ''It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months." Bush never located a Boston-area unit, as the Globe explained. On FOX News Channel, Angle and anchor Brit Hume (FOX News Channel managing editor and chief Washington correspondent) uncritically accepted White House communications director Dan Bartlett's insistence that despite Bush's signed pledge, a subsequent “special order” by the Guard's Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver placing Bush on inactive Ready Reserve somehow released Bush from his obligation to fulfill the remainder of his service. But Bartlett's explanation is controversial at best, given that the military expert who examined Bush's records for the Globe saw all the relevant documents and reached the opposite conclusion:

Brit Hume: A new ad promoted to the media by the Kerry camp accuses George Bush of skipping National Guard duty. But a Boston Globe accusation on that appears to be false.

[...]

The Bush camp has now produced, or at least called attention to, records that presumably the Globe had access to that [indicate] Bush had, in fact, got a discharge from his duties at that time, and was not required to have any. [FOX News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, 9/8/04]

Jim Angle: Official documents show that Bush did request an early out to go to graduate school in September of 1973, which was granted. He was honorably discharged from active reserve and placed on inactive Ready Reserve, meaning he could have been called up if needed.

Dan Bartlett: [clip] They knew where to locate him. And that was the obligation he had. And that's the obligation he fulfilled. [FOX News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, 9/8/04]

The issue raised by the Globe story was not whether the Guard “knew where to locate” Bush. Rather, as a September 8 article in U.S. News & World Report -- which relied on the same expert analysis of Bush's records by retired Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter -- makes clear, Bush signed the document committing to “continue his service in Boston” because he had not completed enough drills to fulfill his original six-year service obligation.

FALSE DEFENSE #4: “Another commander” said Bush served in Alabama

According to examinations by news organizations including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report, and CBS News, available records provide no evidence to support White House claims that Bush served temporary duty with the Alabama Guard beginning in the fall of 1972. A new ad by the anti-Bush group Texans for Truth shows Retired Lieutenant Colonel Bob Mintz -- who served in Bush's unit, the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group of the Alabama Air National Guard, from 1967 to 1984 -- insisting that he does not remember ever seeing Bush. As these questions resurfaced, Bush's defenders again pointed to Retired Lieutenant Colonel John B. “Bill” Calhoun, who claims he served alongside Bush at Alabama's Dannelly Air National Guard Base. But Calhoun has been discredited; as The Washington Post noted (and as MMFA has pointed out), Calhoun claims to remember seeing Bush between May and October 1972, though the White House itself acknowledges Bush did not begin performing drills in Alabama until October. But FOX News Channel viewers were not told of the doubts about Calhoun's veracity:

Sean Hannity: And we have another former commander in the unit who has testified that President Bush was there. [FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, 9/8/04]

Jim Angle: [A] former commander has said he was there and worked out of his office. [FOX News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, 9/8/04]

Though neither mentioned Calhoun by name, MMFA found no record of any other former commander of the 187th who has memories of Bush serving in Alabama. On the September 9 Special Report, Angle cited Calhoun explicitly:

ANGLE: But a man who says he served with him in Alabama told Hannity & Colmes ... there is no question that Mr. Bush served there [in Alabama].

CALHOUN: [clip from FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes] Since then, there have been five or six that have come forward and they did see him. I would give more credence to the people that saw him, than people that said they didn't see him.

On September 10, Salon.com's Eric Boelhert pointed out that in addition to FOX, Calhoun was also embraced by ABC News, CNN and the Associated Press as a source for reports on Bush's Guard service.

FALSE DEFENSE #5: Bush did not invite scrutiny of his military service, unlike Kerry

Commentators on FOX News Channel repeatedly insisted that Bush didn't deserve attacks on his military service record, unlike Kerry, who they claim invited the widely discredited attacks on his Vietnam service by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on himself by touting his service as an important credential qualifying him to be president. (MMFA has previously documented the use of this dubious argument on FOX News Channel.)

Brit Hume: But there are another distinctions [sic] that might be made -- and seems to me should be made -- is that John Kerry has made his Vietnam behavior made his Vietnam era behavior a centerpiece of his campaign, something the president has hardly done. He has never said boo about it. Other than when asked, he said, “I served. I got an honorable discharge. I did my -- did my -- did what I was supposed to do.” Beyond that, he never wanted to talk about it.

Mara Liasson (National Public Radio national political correspondent and FOX News Channel contributor): There's no doubt. No doubt. [FOX News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, 9/8]

FOX News Channel host Brian Kilmeade: Did the president get up on his podium that was made just for his presentation and say reporting for duty? No, he's not running on that record, he's running on being governor and being president for the last four years. But in some people's mind, I guess, it's equal. [FOX News Channel, FOX & Friends, 9/9/04]

But as MMFA has previously noted, even before this election cycle, Bush attempted to use his military record to bolster campaigns for public office, including for president in 2000. During his 1978 congressional campaign, he circulated campaign literature falsely claiming he had served in the Air Force. During his 1978 congressional campaign, he falsely claimed he had served in the Air Force, and when questioned about that claim in July 1999, as Salon.com's Boehlert reported in a February 5 article, “Bush's then-spokeswoman Karen Hughes told the Associated Press it was accurate for Bush to suggest, as he'd done in a previous campaign, that he served ”in the U.S. Air Force," when in fact he served in the Air National Guard." Bush also lied about his military record in his 1999 autobiography about how long he flew jets for the Guard. These lies have gone virtually unreported by the media.

And while "[f]ormer President George H. W. Bush has attacked those who have questioned President George W. Bush's service record during the Vietnam War," the Center for American Progress noted, “it was George H. W. Bush who orchestrated a similar attack on his opponents in 1988.” The elder Bush's campaign co-chairman, John Sununu, accused Senator Lloyd Bentsen (the vice presidential candidate running with Bush's opponent, Michael Dukakis) of “helping his son get into the National Guard.”