Texas politician says he helped Bush into Guard to score points
Posted on Sunday, September 05 @ 09:51:36 EDT
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By Michael Dobbs, San Jose Mercury News

WASHINGTON - A senior Texas politician has told close friends that he recommended George W. Bush for a pilot's slot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War because he was eager to "collect chits" from an influential political family.

The reported comments by former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes add fuel to a long-running controversy over how Bush got a slot in an outfit known as the "Champagne Unit" because it included so many sons of prominent Texans. Friends said Barnes had recorded an interview for the CBS program "60 Minutes" that will address the question of whether Bush pulled strings to evade being sent to Vietnam.

Barnes, a longtime Democrat who works as a lobbyist and political consultant in Austin, has said that he is "very ashamed" of helping "a lot of people who had family names of importance get in the National Guard." He made the statement during a meeting with John Kerry supporters in Austin on May 27, a video of which is now circulating on the Internet.


Friends said Barnes will expand on these remarks in his interview with "60 Minutes," while taking care not to contradict sworn testimony from 1999, in which he said that no member of the Bush family had directly asked him for help. Barnes was unavailable for comment Friday.

The White House, which has been anticipating a Democratic counterattack on Bush's military record since a flurry of attacks on Kerry by former Vietnam veterans funded by prominent Republican contributors, dismissed Barnes as a "partisan Democrat." In a CBS News interview last week, former President George H.W. Bush described charges that he used his influence to get his son into the National Guard as "a total lie."

According to a friend who has spoken with Barnes in recent days, Barnes is willing to go public with a charge that he first made behind closed doors in September 1999, when he testified in a wrongful-dismissal lawsuit brought by a former associate. In a sworn affidavit, Barnes testified that he had been approached by a longtime Bush family friend, Houston businessman Sidney Adger, for help in getting George W. Bush into the National Guard.

Barnes is now telling friends that he understood that Adger was making his request on behalf of the Bush family, even though he has no memory of Adger explicitly saying he was. He based his understanding on the knowledge that Adger was extremely close to the Bush family and his feeling that Adger would not have acted without their consent.

At the time, Barnes was speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, and in close touch with the head of the Texas Air National Guard, Brig. Gen. James Rose. Adger and Rose are dead.

In addition to Bush, who was accepted for pilot training in May 1968, other recruits to the Texas National Guard during the late 1960s included the son of former Texas Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and members of the Dallas Cowboys football team.
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Just another look into how Big Money can and do whatever it wants. There are rumors and of course that is all they are at this point that the Republican Party will try and amend the constitution so Arnold can run for President. As long as we are on the rumor mill why not amend it so people who have a net worth of over 1 million cannot run. It would be nice to see a President that is a little more attached to the common folk.

There's a rumor that Elvis is alive and well and planning a big comeback.

Viva Las Vegas!

Well there you go, take the easy way out, go AWOL, and have no military record to back up your statements.Slander the people that did serve with HONOR. Show your true colors(yellow), send the less fortunate son's and daughter's to fight and DIE, all after stealing an election, and call yourself the commander in chief. All of this while your best buddy (cheney) rapes the coffers of the american public, then uses this blood money to buy more adds to lie more to the public. Quite a guy..........
Come november, we are going to send this AWOL, Coward packing, along with his Arab oil loving family.

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Three questions for you Somethingsmellsfishy:

1.) Do you know the difference between unsubstantiated hearsay and verifiable fact?

2.) Are you familiar with Joseph Goebbels propaganda theory of how 3 lies told effectively become a truth to the easily manipulated masses?

3.) Do you know what a 'blind trust' is?

Da-duh-daaaa! It's Captain Irony !!

Aunty M,

You obviously don't know what a 'blind trust' is either.

When you try and figure out what it is with Google--see if you can come up with any credible evidence that Bush 43 was ever AWOL.

Maybe it will be at the same site that has proof of W. using cocaine

Google ya later

RB

Watch 60 minutes tonight and see the truth for yourself.