I think Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum slipped on links.


Marshall links to J Calhoun's claims at CNN (which he describes as the ap) before linking to the Houston Chronicle which observes that Calhoun claims to have seen Bush in his office in the Dannelly Air National Guard basemonths before Bush requested a transfer to the 187th Air National Guard Tactical squadron.

In fact the relatively specific claims which prove either that Calhoun is lying or that he was misquoted do not appear in the CNN story but do appear in the Washington Post

The implausible assertions are in the sentence "Calhoun estimated that he saw Bush sign in at the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group eight to 10 times for about eight hours each from May to October 1972. ."
The period May to October fits the period from preliminary approval of Bush's transfer to the 9921st Air reserve but does not correspond to his trasfer to the 187th ANG tactical squadron. Bush Was ordered to appear first on October 7th and 8th (and he didn't show up probably because he was a pallbearer at his grandfather's funeral that day). The reference to service in May, June, July, August and/or September makes sense in a lie given the published assertions about when Bush transfered. It makes no sense as a memory.

The written record shows only two days of in the May *through* October period and that on the very last weekend in the period. Now 8 to 10 days are just too many. Even if some service was missed due to sloppy paper work there are only 3 weekends in the period in which Bush was assigned to the 187th and not seen in another state.

In subsequent interviews Calhoun has scaled back his claim to "at least 6 occasions". This is the calpundit post in which, it seems to me, Drum slips up on a link. The link is to a very recent story on the mass release of Bush ANG records. Finally in the CNN story it is down to 4 to 6 occasions.

I actually haven't found the raw AP story to which Marshall and Drum are trying to link.