Burden on A.W.O.L.

I know the Righties hate Reuters, but that's too bad, they are aces in my book for (1) Not being owned by an insane cult leader; and (2) There is no Nedra Pickler.

Their headlines also manage to accurately sum up the actual meaning of the story, and today, in connection with Bush's FOUND military payroll records, they do it again.

Bush's Military Records Fail to Dispel AWOL Charges

Of course, any of us who have followed the Chimperial Presidency know that when information (this apparently was found a few days ago) gets released on a Friday afternoon, in the middle of a major newscycle, it means there is information the Bush Administration knows is bad. They know the Jonah and his collection of ninnyhammers and Instanutjob will come through for them, but eventually it will be bad.

But, back to the story:

Some of President Bush's missing Air National Guard records during the Vietnam War years, previously said to be destroyed, turned up on Friday but offered no new evidence to dispel charges by Democrats that he was absent without leave.

His whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue. Bush's Democratic presidential challenger, John Kerry, is a decorated Vietnam War veteran.

The Pentagon, which had announced two weeks ago that the payroll records had been accidentally destroyed, blamed a clerical error for previous failure to find them.

In May 1972, Bush moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign and, he has said, to perform his Guard service there for a year. But other Guard officers have said they have no recollection of ever seeing him there.

Bush was the son of a U.S. congressman at a time when National Guard service was seen as a way for the privileged to avoid being drafted for Vietnam War duty.

Questions over his record resurfaced this year as Bush sought, in the midst of the Iraq war, to cast himself as a "war president" in his drive to win reelection on Nov. 2.

The documents released on Friday by the Pentagon included two faded computerized payroll sheets showing Bush was not paid during the latter part of 1972 and offer no evidence to place Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972.

I do think the presumption is now on Bush to pretty much prove that every word he manages to extrude out of his pie-hole (usually in scrambled syntax-challenged form) must be challenged for veracity with the burden upon him.

When is Peter Jennings going to apologize to Michael Moore by the way?

We here at Rising Hegemon are proud to be the 179th Leftist Blog to bring you an analysis of this story.