Bush's Guard Service

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 28, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Media Bias: Veteran reporter, author and commentator Bernard Goldberg reports that when CBS News did its fake National Guard story on George W. Bush avoiding service in Vietnam, it knew it was a lie.

It's a liberal urban legend that Bush used the influence of his father and his father's friends to land a cushy position in the Texas National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. The Democrats would run John Kerry as a hero in the war, and CBS News was all too eager to help with Mary Mapes producing a "60 Minutes II" segment in September 2004 charging exactly that.

The story collapsed quickly as documents used to support the allegations against Bush were proved to be amateur night forgeries. CBS did an internal investigation that discredited the memos and caused the network to fire Mapes. Later Dan Rather, who narrated the story, said that while the memos may not have been genuine, he was certain the story was. That was his story, and he stuck to it.

Retired Col. Ed Morrisey, the man who swore Bush into the Guard, told CBS affiliate WVLT in Knoxville, Tenn., a different story. "The Air Force, in their ultimate wisdom, assembled a group of F-102s and took them to Southeast Asia. Bush volunteered to go. But he needed to have 500 (flight) hours, but he had just over 300 hours, so he wasn't able to go," Morrisey said.

Fact is, Bush enlisted as an airman basic in the 147th Fighter-Interceptor Group at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston on May 28, 1968 — when the 147th was participating in combat in Vietnam. From 1968 through 1970, pilots from the 147th participated in operation Palace Alert.

The F-102 Bush flew was designed primarily for defense against the threat of Soviet bombers, and units charged with this task were the best of the best. Only a return of his unit's mission to continental air defense before Bush completed his flight training made it unlikely he'd fly in combat. Bush avoided nothing.

The heart of the Mapes-Rather hatchet job was that Bush was a coward who avoided action in Vietnam. That was false, and CBS' own report on the matter shows that Mapes knew it was false.

Goldberg, who used to work at CBS, revealed last week that, according to the report, "Mapes had information prior to the airing of the Sept. 8 (2004) segment that President Bush, while in the Texas Air National Guard, did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots."

The report continued: "For example, a flight instructor who served in the (Guard) with Lt. Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Bush 'did want to go to Vietnam, but others went first.' Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before Sept. 8, that Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify."

It's still unclear whether Rather also knew this particular truth. But as anchor and managing editor of "CBS Evening News," he should have. He and Mapes were and are hard-core Democrats, and it's unlikely Mapes kept Rather in the dark.

One thing we can be sure of: Don't expect to see this particular story on "60 Minutes."