History isn't his strong suit - lying is
The Quagmire Quagmire (washingtonpost.com)
In a recent speech to the National Guard convention Bush said:
"Nineteen individuals have served both in the Guard and as President of the United States, and I am proud to be one of them."
Bullshit!
Ignoring the fact that he served in the Guard to dodge a war and on top of that didn't complete his service, only two US presidents have served in the National Guard - Bush and Harry Truman. And Truman was in combat in WWI.
So where did the other 17 come from? The so-called "predecessor organizations" to the Guard - you know, the Minutemen - the state militias. It's a real stretch to consider these the Guard in the way Bush is doing it because in those days - the 18th and 19th centuries - the standing army amounted to little. The real defense forces were the local militias and the local militias - like today's Guard - really did go to war. In the Civil War, for example, it was almost all state militia vs. state militia, Very, very few Guard were in Vietnam combat. Instead, the Guard was a way for the rich and well-connected to avoid combat - as Secretary of State Powell made clear in his biography. Not so today - and certainly not so when the other presidents served in it.
But Bush thinks he deserves to stand with those others. He doesn't. He brings shame to the Guard, just as he does to the country. In the 1960s he didn't fight. He got others to do it for him - just as he is doing today. The man lives in a fantasy land and somehow manages to sucker others into his nice, comfortable fantasy.
