May 8, 2003

Sparkey Weighs In

Sparkey over at Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing applauds Bush's military service record. And you really ought to read down through the comments and learn more about how bad paperwork problems can be in the Guard and Reserves. Sparkey commentson Bush's records in light of that charge that Bush managed to get assigned at the end of his Guard stint to a unit where he had no responsibilities, and perhaps never showed up, noting that by the time of that assignment, Bush had already completed the service requirements of his enlistment. The unit, says Sparkey, is

an administrative holding tank for Guardsmen/Reservists that have "Non-Obligatory" (drill optional) status. Because he had so many days of active duty, he had exceeded the requirements set forth in his enlistment contract.

... As to the poor records well, all I can say is welcome to the world of the United States Guard & Reserves. Everyone must realize that being at the bottom of the DoD food chain, the Guard/Reserves have had, and still have massive paperwork and record keeping problems. It was bad when I was in the Navy Reserves in the late 80's. And everyone who'd been there agreed that things had greatly improved from the 70's!

The Navy Reserve officers I drilled with spent 75% of their drill time on paperwork - and never caught up. What would happen is this, if someone didn't squawk for something, it got put on the back burner until forgotten. So gaps and other problems with Bush's record don't surprise me in the least. Look at it from the unit's perspective, being non-Obligatory, why go to the effort to keep accurate records when he (Bush) wasn't worried about the year counting for retirement? If Bush wasn't going to push, the unit certainly wouldn't. As to the colonel not remembering Bush, well why would he? With Lt. Bush being Non-Obligatory, he wasn't someone he (the Col.) really needed to keep track of. Bush would have simply dropped off the colonel's radar screen.