Know Bush Fact #15

Based on the belief that the truth shall set you free:

Forty-eight hours before ordering U.S. troops into Iraq a year ago, Bush told the American people, "There’s no certainty in war but the certainty of sacrifice."
For some.

In the spring of 1997, while serving as Mobilization Plans Officer for the Texas National Guard at the state headquarters in Austin, Texas, Ret. Lt. Col. Bill Burkett came to the office of Adjutant General Daniel James to ask a question.

The door was open about 8 inches and Burkett could hear the voice of Joe M. Allbaugh, then-Governor Bush’s chief of staff, on the speakerphone. The General and Allbaugh were discussing sanitizing Bush’s records in preparation for Karen Hughes' official biography in preparation for Bush's re-election campaign. Burkett heard Allbaugh tell General James, "We certainly don’t want anything that is embarrassing in there."

Ten days later, Chief Warrant Officer George Conn, in whom he'd confided, walked Burkett over to a remote room in the museum on base where the head of the museum, General John Scribner, was sitting at a folding table with a 15-gallon trashcan next to him, going through papers. Looking down, Burkett saw 20-40 pages of performance documents in the can. At the top of the pages he could see was the "Bush, George W., 1LT."

Joe M. Allbaugh was appointed by Bush to be the Director of FEMA where he stayed until March 2003, when the war began. He is now Chairman and Director of New Bridge Strategies, LLC, a company created to assist businesses in getting the lucrative contracts in "rebuilding" Iraq.

Adjutant General Daniel James was nominated by Bush on September 20, 2001 to be Director of the Air National Guard, where he has been serving since June 2002.

To research/verify, Google "Bush +Guard +Trash."

- March 17, 2004