The White House is pointing to Bush's honorable discharge from the Air National Guard as ipso facto proof that he served honorably.

So why did he get an honorable discharge?

I have no clue. Especially considering the documents that have come to light recently.

For instance, remember how the White House said that it wasn't necessary for Bush to report for a flight physical, because he had stopped flying? From CBS's interview with White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett:

No, the records have been clear for years that President Bush did not take a physical because he did not need to take a physical because, obviously, the choice was that he was going to be performing in a different capacity. That might be official language, but the bottom line is President Bush did not take that physical, so that does not suggest, nor is there any evidence that President Bush did. And the reason why is as I stated, that it was clear, as it says in your own documents, that President Bush talked to the commanders about the fact that he'd be transferring to a unit that no longer, or did not fly the plane that he was trained -- he was trained and a fighter pilot on F-102, which he flew for four years. And in this case, he was going to a unit in Alabama that didn't fly that plane.

All well and good, until a letter ordering Bush to take the physical surfaces. Bush didn't take the physical -- yes, that means he disobeyed a direct order from his commanding officer -- and was suspended from flight duty. Turns out, though, that he wasn't just suspended for failing to take his physical...he was also suspended for "failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards."

But look what comes along next! Some sort of pressure from above! (what...you think a Bush would have someone pull strings for him? Such a cynic you are!) No, I'm not talking about the pressure that got Bush into the National Guard...I'm talking about the pressure from "someone upstairs" on his commanding officer to sugarcoat Bush's record. He wrote, in a memo to file entitled "CYA", that "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job."

CBS, which obtained most of these new documents, points out that:

Larry Korb, an assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan has reviewed the Mr. Bush's record and believes he did not fulfill his contract.

"Essentially, Bush gamed the system to avoid serving his country the way that most of his contemporaries had to," Korb said.

Guess what else is new? According to the Boston Globe , Bush signed documents -- not once, but twice -- in which he promised to meet training commitments and acknowledged that he could be called up to active duty if he failed to do so. He never met those commitments:

[E]arly in his Guard service, on May 27, 1968, Bush signed a ''statement of understanding" pledging to achieve ''satisfactory participation" that included attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty -- usually involving two weekend days each month -- and 15 days of annual active duty. ''I understand that I may be ordered to active duty for a period not to exceed 24 months for unsatisfactory participation," the statement reads.

Yet Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, performed no service for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show.

And on his last day in uniform (according to his records), July 30, 1973,

Bush signed a document that declared, ''It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months. . . " Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.

Needless to say, he didn't. From the Globe story:

Even retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel chief who vouched for Bush at the White House's request in February, agreed that Bush walked away from his obligation to join a reserve unit in the Boston area when he moved to Cambridge in September 1973. By not joining a unit in Massachusetts, Lloyd said in an interview last month, Bush ''took a chance that he could be called up for active duty. But the war was winding down, and he probably knew that the Air Force was not enforcing the penalty."

The White House, incidentally, is accusing Democrats of "playing dirty politics"...but is conspicuously not providing definite proof that Bush deserved his honorable discharge.

Now here's where Salon and a Philadelphia caterer named Paul Lukasiak (don't you just love the Internet, where anybody can do this kind of research?) pick up the story:

On Oct. 1, 1973, Bush received an honorable discharge from the Texas Air National Guard in order to move to Boston and attend the Harvard Business School, where he was still obligated to find a unit in Massachusetts to fulfill his remaining nine months of duty, or face being placed on active duty. Once again, Bush made no such effort. But the Air Force in Denver, acting retroactively, in effect overturned Bush's honorable discharge and placed him on "Inactive Status" effective Sept. 15, 1973. When Bush left Texas, his personnel file was sent to Denver for review. The ARPC quickly realized Bush had failed to take a required physical exam, his Texas superior could not account for his whereabouts covering nearly a 12-month period, and due to absenteeism Bush had failed to "satisfactorily participate" as a member of the Texas Air National Guard. Bush's "Inactive Status" meant his relationship with the Air Force (and the Guard) was severed and he was therefore eligible for the draft.

Soon afterward, large gaps began appearing in Bush's paper trail. Lukasiak concludes that only last-minute intervention, likely from Bush's local Houston draft board, saved him from active duty, as well as finally securing his honorable discharge, removing his "Inactive Status." Ironically, that means strings were pulled to get Bush out of the Guard in 1973, just as they were pulled to get him enrolled in 1968.

(Lukasiak's website, The AWOL Project, is definitely worth checking out. Especially for the section that exhaustively documents how Bush seems to have been "rehabilitated" in the eyes of the Air National Guard.)

Kevin Drum's comments over at Political Animal are also worth excerpting:

This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift Boat controversy and the National Guard controversy. Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but the documentary evidence in the two cases is like night and day. In the Swift Boat case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence indicates that Kerry's accusers are lying. Conversely, in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true.

In fact, these four memos are pretty close to a smoking gun, since it's now clear that (a) Bush was directly ordered to take a physical in 1972 and refused, and (b) he plainly failed to perform up to National Guard standards, but that (c) he was nonetheless saved from a failing evaluation thanks to high-level pressure.

So why did Bush refuse to take a physical that year? And why did he blow off drills for at least the next five months and possibly for a lot longer than that?

Indeed.

And then there's this AP story:

The newly released records also showed that while Bush says he was in Alabama training with another Guard unit in 1972, his home unit in Texas was participating in the air defense of the southern United States by keeping two jet fighters constantly ready for launch within five minutes' notice.

Democrats said that meant Bush passed on a chance to defend his country. Bush flew the F-102A jets his unit kept on alert but was grounded in August 1972 because of the missed medical check.

"When his unit was placed on a 24-hour alert mission to protect our country from surprise attack, why did George Bush not report for duty?" Democratic National Committee head Terry McAuliffe said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday.

McAuliffe also suggested Bush lied when he said he had released all available records and had fulfilled his Guard obligations.

"Either George Bush was deliberately lying to the American public or he had some type of very severe memory loss," McAuliffe said.

Bush spokesmen scoffed. They said the Pentagon had not done the extensive search Bush ordered and noted that Bush had approval to train in late 1972 with an Alabama unit.

Imagine that. The Pentagon didn't do the search that Bush ordered. It's such a bitch when your subordinates don't follow your direct orders, isn't it?