$10,000 Reward For Proof That GWB Wasn't AWOL

[gary350 0]

Doonesbury creator seeks witness to Bush National Guard duty

By MIKE PETERS
Dallas Morning News
Published on: 02/24/04

"His teeth were there," says the gently mocking Web page. "Was he?"

The teeth — and the now-famous dental chart — belong to George W. Bush, who as president continues to fend off questions about his National Guard service.

On Monday, Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau offered a $10,000 reward in his syndicated newspaper comic strip for anyone who "personally witnessed" Bush reporting for drills at Dannelly Air National Guard base in Alabama between May and November 1972. Trudeau explains in strips later this week — and on his Web site, doonesbury.com — that the reward money will be given to the USO in the witness's name.

"Sounds like a stunt worthy of a comic strip," Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson said Monday.

Trudeau, responding in an e-mail Monday, said the issue matters. "How well George W. Bush handled his Air National Guard service — and how honestly he answered questions about it — have become frequently asked questions in the 2004 presidential campaign," he said.

"It's a legitimate offer," said comics historian R.C. Harvey.

"It reminds me of Larry Flynt offering a big prize to anybody who could prove they had sex with a member of Congress," said Harvey. Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, was outraged that "hypocrites" in the House were pushing for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The offer led to an expose of House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston, who ultimately resigned.

"But personally, I think Garry Trudeau will precipitate a rainstorm of fraud," Harvey said. "Hundreds of people will come forward and they will all be fakes and the whole thing will be a huge, marvelous satire."

Trudeau is an old hand at mixing it up with issues of the day. The cartoonist not only has broken new ground on the comics pages but also has used his platform to stir debate on hot-button topics. His work has raised questions about whether such material belongs on the comics pages or the editorial pages — or in the paper at all.

The political lens he focused on the Nixon White House during Watergate entrenched Doonesbury in political discourse.

More recently, he has poked fun at the idealism of Howard Dean supporters with the same ironic malice he has aimed at Donald Rumsfeld's management of the Iraq war.

The president's military record has been fodder for the strip since Bush ran in 2000. Critics have questioned whether Bush continued his drills with the National Guard after he transferred from Texas to Alabama in 1972 to work for a Senate campaign there.

When Bush's National Guard service recently re-emerged in a lively public debate, the White House responded by releasing the president's military records. Critics focused on the January 1973 dental charts as the only evidence that Bush was in Alabama.

Trudeau said that he hopes "to speed the disclosure process along by offering a $10,000 reward to coax a witness to step forward and confirm President Bush's story, thereby putting the whole sordid mess behind us."

The reward is Trudeau's most direct attack on Bush's military service record yet — though he insists, with tongue firmly in cheek, that he's tired of "trolling-for-trash journalists" repeatedly probing the issue.

The White House and the Bush-Cheney campaign had no comment.

Lee Salem, the editor of Doonesbury at Universal Press Syndicate, said the current story line will run through Saturday in about 1,500 newspapers around the country. When told that a scoffing campaign official had suggested Trudeau should be prepared to write a lot of checks, Salem said, "I'm sure he's hoping to do that."

Trudeau may be hoping to pay off on the reward, but the Web site makes no secret of his views. The site's straw-poll question Monday was, "What steams you most about the Guard story?" One of the checkable options: "The smelly no-documents thing: As a U.S. serviceman, Bush was embedded in the most extensive bureaucracy in the history of the world — yet at every turn the key information is missing. Dude, where's your paperwork?"