More AWOL The secret to figuring out a magician's secret to look where he doesn't want you to look . Ignore the arm making the extravagant, over large movements, and look where he doesn't want you to look.
Donald Sensing of the weblog One Hand Clappingdoes quite a bit of extravagant arm waving to demolish Michael Moore's claim that George Bush is a deserter. He demonstrates that such a charge is false.
So? We already knew that President Bush wasn't a deserter.
Ironically, Sensing concludes his post with this: "Facts can be such inconvenient things when ideology is paramount". In this case the facts are clear: there are mysterious lacunae in Bush's military service records. It is also undeniable that no satisfying answers have ever been provided. Given what we know, it is completely reasonable for a fair minded person to suspect that the Bush family name allowed young George to treat his military service with a lack of seriousness that would have netted a less well-connected individual a severe punishment.
The real question isn't what Bush was doing during the years in question, but rather the successful quashing of the story. Few voters seem to have ever heard the charges. Compare this story with the play that similar questions about Bill Clinton's Vietnam-era activities received. Everyone knows about those, and conservative media still attack Clinton for his lack of military service.
The reason that most people don't know the questions around President Bush's service record it that as soon as they are raised, dismissed as unproven or untrue. David Brooks did it on PBS's Newshour on Friday and Peter Jennings did it during the debate. Once a voter hears Peter Jennings reject an accusation as unfounded, he or she is likely to conclude that Jennings is basing his rejection on legitimate grounds. Since Jennings and The Newshour have successfully been painted as pillars of the "liberal" media, suddenly the questions about Bush's military record have "even been rejected by the librul media".
2:39:18 PM 
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