On ABC this evening, Terry Moran has a piece that runs down the state of play on the Bush Guard issue. In addition to taking an extremely skeptical view of the questions about and criticisms of the lapses in the president’s service, he repeats the claims of James “Bill” Calhoun, who says he saw young George W. Bush show up for his drills as many as six times during the period in question.
“I have no doubt in my mind that it was George W. Bush that he made his drills,” Moran quotes Calhoun telling him. “He was very professional. He came in uniform. He signed in. He was very low-key.”
What he doesn’t mention is that six months ago numerous press reports noted that records showed that Bush hadn’t even been assigned to the unit in question at the time Calhoun remembers seeing him there.
See Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Memories place Bush in Alabama if records don’t,” Feb. 13th, 2004, among other examples.
I think ‘liar’ is too strong a term for lapses in momentary recollections from 30+ years ago. But the significance of Calhoun’s recollection seems pretty questionable on this count.
Perhaps Moran could have mentioned that.
