contrapositive

The Lost Year A couple more fresh tidbits in the Washington Post's Bush/AWOL story that I missed the first time through:

1) The Post story is more direct than the 2000 Boston Globe story in asserting that Bush got his guard slot through special treatment:

"A review of Bush's military records shows that Bush enjoyed preferential treatment as the son of a then-congressman, when he walked into a Texas Guard unit in Houston two weeks before his 1968 graduation from Yale and was moved to the top of a long waiting list."

The Globe story had hedged a bit, noting:

Bush and his father have denied that he received any preferential treatment. But last year, Ben Barnes, who was speaker of the Texas House in 1968, said in a sworn deposition in a civil lawsuit that he called Guard officials seeking a Guard slot for Bush after a friend of Bush's father asked him to do so.

2) William Turnipseed, the Alabama guard officer Bush was ordered to report to in the spring of 1972, seems to have backed just a hair away from his claim in the 2000 Globe article that, "Had [Bush] reported in, I would have had some recall and I do not."

In today's Post:

"Turnipseed stood by his contention that Bush never reported to him. But Turnipseed added that he could not recall if he, himself, was on the base much at that time."

The plot thickens...