You’ll want to link through to this one — it’s a video clip of Ben Barnes, the former Speaker of the House in Texas, the guy who got President Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.
I’m told the tape is from a recent Kerry rally <$NoAd$>and in it Barnes says the following …
Letâs talk a minute about John Kerry and George Bush and I know them both. And Iâm not name dropping to say I know âem both. I got a young man named George W. Bush in the National Guard when I was Lt. Gov. of Texas and Iâm not necessarily proud of that. But I did it. And I got a lot of other people into the National Guard because I thought that was what people should do, when you’re in office you helped a lot of rich people. And I walked through the Vietnam Memorial the other day and I looked at the names of the people that died in Vietnam and I became more ashamed of myself than I have ever been because it was the worst thing that I did was that I helped a lot of wealthy supporters and a lot of people who had family names of importance get into the National Guard and Iâm very sorry about that and Iâm very ashamed and I apologize to you as voters of Texas.
Now, I don’t know what Ben Barnes looks like. And I do not independently know the provenance of the tape. But I’ve spoken to two sources who know Barnes. And they tell me that that is Barnes on the tape.
One of those two men is Jim Moore — co-author of Bush’s Brain. Moore told me this afternoon that the clip is from June 8th of this year, at a Kerry rally in Austin. Moore assures me that the tape is legitimate.
I placed a call to Barnes’ office and left a message with one of his assistants; but the request for comment has not yet been returned.
