Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Questions Raised Over Bush's Service

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

September 10, 2004

Re "Documents Say Bush Got Breaks in Military," Sept. 9, on President Bush's National Guard service: It isn't so much trying to avoid going to Vietnam, or even using his father's connections to avoid what my own friends couldn't avoid. It isn't even losing interest in his obligation as a young man to serve his country in a time of war, or disobeying a direct order, which would have landed any other man in the brig and in the jungles of Vietnam.

It is the moral cowardice he displays by not owning up to it for these many years. This man, George W. Bush, has apparently never in his life fulfilled a duty; when called upon, he has lied and weaseled his way out of his duties and obligations because his daddy's friends were always there to grease the way for him. He then feels entitled to lie and bluff and question the patriotism of others. Does anybody think that's acceptable behavior for the president of the U.S.?

Cathleen Bemis

Los Angeles

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When I think of all the members of the National Guard serving honorably in Iraq, all the service personnel retained involuntarily in a war zone beyond their service expiration dates and the discharged soldiers recalled back to duty, the scandalous nature of Bush's special treatment and his no-show attendance in the Texas and Alabama Air National Guard becomes an issue that demands a public answer from the president who took us into Iraq under false pretenses.

Doug Ryan

San Gabriel

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-iraq10.2sep10,1,2335372.story?coll=la-news-comment...