OK, so we have Kerry's KNOWN service in Vietnam where he bravely fought, was injured, and saved the lives of other soldiers. Now, compare that to this clown of a president and his "service." Can you imagine the outcry from Republicans if shoe was on the other foot, i.e. if Kerry and Bush switched military backgrounds?!! The Republicans would make absolute mince meat of Kerry and the polls would be 70-30 in favor of Bush!!

Yet, as it is, we have things like the following:

Bush's military records show gaps in drill attendance from May 1, 1972, to April 30, 1973, when his Texas supervisors could not account for his whereabouts and said so in his last written evaluation. During that time, Bush lived briefly in Alabama, where he worked for the Senate campaign of Winton "Red" Blount. He returned to Texas to work in a Houston program for troubled youth.

C. Murphy Archibald, who worked on the Blount campaign, said that in the fall of 1972, Bush frequently was late for work on the Alabama campaign and often bragged about how much he drank the night before. (USA Today)


So Bush was AWOL from his military duty AND on top of that couldn't manage to show up on time for his campaign job, too hung over to even do that! Yes, this our current president!

And this:

In one of the most damaging attacks, Ben Barnes, the former lieutenant governor of Texas, said he had helped Mr Bush dodge the Vietnam draft by securing him a sought-after place in the Texas air national guard.

"I would describe it as preferential treatment. There were hundreds of names on the list of people wanting to get into the air national guard or the army national guard."

Yesterday, a group calling itself Texans for Truth - an echo of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who have questioned Mr Kerry's service - aired a 30-second advertisement claiming that Mr Bush did not show up for service in the Alabama air national guard after his transfer from Killian's unit.

In the advert, retired Lt Col Robert Mintz said he could not remember Mr Bush serving in his unit, the 187th air national guard in Montgomery, Alabama.

"I called my friends and said: 'Did you know that George Bush served in our unit?'. Everyone said: 'No, I never saw him there.' It would be impossible to be unseen in a unit of that size," he says in the ad. (Guardian Unlimited)


Robert Kuttner summed it up in yesterday's Boston Globe:

Based on the issues, it's astonishing that Kerry is running slightly behind Bush. The Iraq war is an unpopular fiasco, the economy is not delivering for regular people, and Bush's repeat deceptions are far more disqualifying than Kerry's much-exaggerated flip-flops. As actor John Lovitz, playing a sinking Michael Dukakis listening to Bush the First blither through scripted remarks, memorably said on Saturday Night Live in 1988, "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy."