Reply #5: Via BuzzFlash [View All]

[Eric J in MN]

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/08/int04043.html

BuzzFlash: Speaking of service in Vietnam. Various Bush defenders, including the chairman of the GOP, have indignantly asserted that Bush volunteered to go to Vietnam if his unit was called, but your book indicates that he indicated to the Guard that he did not want to serve overseas -- and that he admitted as much to Tim Russert. Tell us more about this discrepancy.

Ian Williams: He has wriggled and squirmed on this one. He ticked a box on entering the service to say "no" to Overseas Service. He has admitted on occasion that he joined the Guard precisely to avoid going to Vietnam. At one point they tried to spin it that he had tried to join a program, Palace Alert, that took the Air National Guard to Vietnam. But that program ended a week after he finished flight school. More honestly, while memories were fresh, in 1994 he told the Houston Chronicle, "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes." In fact, the Air National Guard unit he joined was known as Air Canada – because it was as good as a flight north of border, but with none of the political or meteorological drawbacks. And he most recently agreed with Tim Russert that he had not volunteered.