Inadvertently AWOL?
The report from the Pentagon that Bush's payroll records were "inadvertently destroyed" was just an ''inadvertent oversight.'' They were released in the usual late Friday night dump style to keep it low key, and they prove only that July, August, and September of 1972 existed.
Like records released earlier by the White House, these computerized payroll records show no indication Bush drilled with the Alabama unit during July, August and September of 1972. Pay records covering all of 1972, released previously, also indicated no guard service for Bush during those three months.
The records do not give any new information about Bush's National Guard training during 1972, when he transferred to the Alabama National Guard unit so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of a family friend. The payroll records do not say definitively whether Bush attended training that summer because they are maintained separately from attendance records.
I'm with Marshall on this one:
I concede the point that payroll records may have been wrong, or rather simply not have recorded times when the future president showed up for duty. But no new information? These new documents seem to provide at least some added confirmation that the president never showed up for drills as he said he did, right? What am I missing?
And Atrios goes even further:
I continued flying with my unit for the next several years [after completing training in June 1970]
claimed Bush in his autobiography A Charge to Keep. That, we've known for years, is bullshit as he stopped flying 22 months later. Tell me again why the liberal media doesn't care that Bush lies about his military service? Tell me again why the military doesn't care that Bush lies about his military service?