Busted! This morning NPR did a follow-up fact-check on that interview Juan Williams did with Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot, in which Racicot claimed — contrary to the evidence — that President Bush volunteered for service in Vietnam, but wasn’t selected.
As we noted on Monday, not only is there no evidence this is true, but President Bush said it wasn’t true only two weeks earlier. The reporter walked through the evidence about the check box and rest of it, and also noted his instructor’s claim (seconded by some of Bush’s fellow pilots from the time) that Bush once asked about a program that sent Guard pilots on short tours overseas.
The reporter didn’t go into all the contradictions in the story about the president’s asking about the program in question. But all told, it’s a good run-down of the facts and NPR deserves credit for not letting Racicot’s false statement stand.
