Reuters:
Some of President Bush's missing Air National Guard records during the Vietnam War years, previously said to be destroyed, turned up on Friday but offered no new evidence to dispel charges by Democrats that he was absent without leave.
His whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue. Bush's Democratic presidential challenger, John Kerry, is a decorated Vietnam War veteran.
In May 1972, Bush moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign and, he has said, to perform his Guard service there for a year. But other Guard officers have said they have no recollection of ever seeing him there.
Bush was the son of a U.S. congressman at a time when National Guard service was seen as a way for the privileged to avoid being drafted for Vietnam War duty.
Questions over his record resurfaced this year as Bush sought, in the midst of the Iraq war, to cast himself as a "war president" in his drive to win reelection on Nov. 2.
The documents released on Friday by the Pentagon included two faded computerized payroll sheets showing Bush was not paid during the latter part of 1972 and offer no evidence to place Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972.
"If the Bush administration continues to search, maybe they'll find answers to the long list of unanswered questions that remain about George W. Bush's time in the Air National Guard. Bush's military records seem to show up as randomly as he did for duty," said DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera.
This little fiasco just gets weirder by the minute. I personally just don't get why someone's military records matter in an election -- or at all for that matter -- and I don't get why the government is so reluctant to hand them over. Surely, nobody cares enough about how many hours Bush spent on duty to sway their vote? Nobody asked to see Paul Martin's military records.
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