One of the consequences of President Bush's political stunt last week flying onto an aircraft carrier has been to revive the dormant allegations that he deserted his Air National Guard unit during the Vietnam War. The short story: George Bush evaded serving in Southeast Asia by joining the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 for a five-year hitch. By 1972, with the draft no longer a threat, Bush sought a transfer to a unit in Alabama, where he had been working on a Senate campaign. There is no evidence he ever appeared, and “(h)is final officer-efficiency report from May 1973 noted only that supervisors hadn't seen him or heard from him.”

Of course, there is probably a perfectly good explanation, both for Bush’s apparent violations of Articles 885 and 886 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and for his subsequent non-explanations of his “service” during the Vietnam War. More disappointing has been the lack of pursuit in this story by the “so-called liberal media”. Other than a Boston Globe investigation during the last election, no other publication bothered to raise these questions, and with only a few exceptions, the media has failed to put last week’s flight by an unlicensed pilot into context. As with the coverage of the recent hostilities in the Persian Gulf, Americans are poorly served with a “free press” that is little more than a for-profit propaganda wing of the powers that be.

UPDATE: Bob Somerby nails this story cold, and discredits an attempted apologia from Andrew Sullivan on the matter.