The White House was forced into an embarrassing defense of President George W. Bush's Vietnam record on Tuesday night amid growing signs of a conservative backlash against his administration and the conduct of the war in Iraq.
In an attempt to lay to rest growing controversy over the president's military service, the White House released 30-year-old personnel records which officials claim prove he had fulfilled his duties for his country.
However, the move appears to have merely stirred further questions over claims that he had failed to finish his service in the National Guard.
PHOTO: EPA
In a another blow to the president's credibility yesterday, Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Channel's leading anchor and White House ally, said that he had lost faith in Bush's pre-war claims on Iraq.
The president's predicament has been exacerbated by expectations of an election contest in November against John Kerry, a Vietnam war hero and Democratic frontrunner.
The White House released payroll and retirement records from Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard yesterday in an attempt to put to rest questions over a "lost year" in his military service, nearly 30 years ago.
Doubts about Bush's stint in the National Guard have been in circulation for 10 years, ever since his election as governor of Texas. Service in the National Guard was a highly desirable assignment because recruits were spared service in Vietnam, and it has been reported that Bush used his father's political connections to win his position.
The present controversy, which revolves around Bush's whereabouts for 12 months dating from May 1972, was given new life last Sunday when the president promised a television interviewer he would release his military records.
At a raucous press conference yesterday, the White House released the payroll and personnel documents. "These records clearly document that the president fulfilled his duty," said the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan.
The documents are the first evidence that Bush appeared for any duty between May 1972 and May 1973, a period when he left Texas to work on a Republican Senate race in Alabama.
"When you serve in the national guard you are specifically paid for the days that you serve," McClellan said.
However, the documents yesterday do not directly answer reports from two of Bush's commanding officers that they were unable to evaluate his performance because they did not observe him on duty.
A story in Tuesday's Boston Globe says that Bush received credit for attending drills despite notes from two commanding officers that he did not appear for duty at bases in Texas or Alabama.
But the White House claims may not carry much weight with a generation that recalls service in the National Guard as a way to avoid being shipped to Vietnam.
The Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote yesterday that he barely turned up for his stint in the guard after six months' basic training.
"For two years or so, I played a perfectly legal form of hooky," he wrote. "To show you what a mess the Guard was at the time, I even got paid for all the meetings I missed."
Bush's present travails date from Jan. 20, when the president delivered a weak State of the Union address, but they have escalated since Sunday when he made his first appearance on a television chatshow to put forward his case on going to war.
The appearance was meant to showcase Bush's expertise in national security. He repeatedly referred to himself as a "war-time president." However, he also appeared tired and evasive -- a fact noted even by Republican stalwarts such as Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for the first president Bush and for Ronald Reagan.
"The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse," she said.
Bush's evasions on the Vietnam war echo his statements on Iraq, and his use of pre-war intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. The erosion of his credibility appeared to reach a critical point when O'Reilly appeared to be losing faith in the White House.
"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this," O'Reilly said.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was