Bush's Father Wrote to General About Guard Service

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Bush's Father Wrote to General About Guard Service
2004-09-17 23:37:38


By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Friday released more documents on President Bush's Vietnam-era Air National Guard Service, including a letter from his then-congressman father George Bush thanking a general for "taking interest in a brand new Air Force trainee."

Dozens of pages of documents, including historical records of the Air Guard unit in which Bush served, were released on orders from the White House. His National Guard service, which critics have charged was performed to avoid going into combat, has become an issue of contention in the presidential race.

"That a major general in the Air Force would take interest in a brand new Air Force trainee made a big impression on me," then Texas Rep. George Bush wrote to Maj. Gen. G.B. Greene Jr., commander of the Lackland Air Force Base Military Training Center, on Sept. 11, 1968.

George Bush, who himself also later became president, referred to a letter that he had received from Greene and said that his son was "anxiously looking forward to going to flight school and, with parental pride, I do have the feeling that he will be a gung ho member of the U.S. Air Force."

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1. Kick.

At the White House, Buchan was asked why the Bush Vietnam-era documents have been released in batches at different times and whether more could be expected.

"The Pentagon has been undertaking, at the president's direction, a very comprehensive review of the documents," she said. "We've been told that they believe they have identified all the documents."

A top Democratic Party official reacted with skepticism, saying that the latest release of documents was the fifth since Bush had promised in 2000 to deliver them.

"More documents, no answers. It's time for this White House to come clean and release all of the President's National Guard records, once and for all," Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said in a statement.