JACKSON - Former President George Bush wasn't prudent (a word he loves) to weigh in on the side of charges against John Kerry's Vietnam service, given that Bush's own performance under fire in World War II is clouded by doubt.
The former president in an Aug. 30 interview on CNN called "rather compelling" the slimy ads by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that attacked Kerry's courageous service in Vietnam and even demeaned the medals Kerry won.
By inserting himself in the ranks of the dirtiest campaign tactic I've witnessed in my many years of covering politics, the elder Bush invited a fresh look at his own questionable performance when his carrier-based plane was hit by Japanese anti-aircraft fire on Sept. 2, 1944.
Then barely 20 years old, Bush, as pilot of a Navy torpedo bomber, bailed out, parachuting into the Pacific off Chichi Jima and was rescued.
But his two crewmen, the radioman and the tail gunner on the torpedo bomber, were not as fortunate as Lieutenant Bush. They perished when the plane plunged into the sea.
Back 12 years ago, when Bush was running for re-election as president, I looked into what happened to his crewmen when Bush's carrier-based plane was shot down during a raid on the Japanese-held Bonin Islands.
My curiosity was piqued by the fact that at the time I was an officer on a Navy destroyer that for two years in the Pacific War picked up dozens of downed carrier pilots and crewmen. That was our main task other than shooting down enemy planes threatening the carriers we guarded.
Further, as part of Task Force 38, my ship participated in the operation around the Bonin Islands at the time when Bush's plane went down. We could have been his rescuer. Instead, USS Finback, a submarine, got to him.
When Bush came into prominence on the political scene in the 1980s, becoming elected vice president and then president, several biographical and personal experience books were written about him.
What struck me on reading three of them was that Bush gave different versions of what he did when his plane was hit and then what happened to his two crewmen.
A comprehensive article by Sidney Blumenthal in The New Republic in the summer of 1992 gave an analytical documentation of at least five different versions Bush had given of what happened over Chichi Jima.
In "Looking Forward," an asserted Bush autobiography written with the help of Victor Gold, the former president claimed he told his crewmen to "bail out" and then jumped himself, but he saw neither leave the plane. One other account said one crewman was killed instantly by the anti-aircraft fire, and that the other jumped but his chute failed to open.
An intelligence report filed by the squadron leader on the USS San Jacinto, the carrier on which Bush was based, noted that Bush reported his plane was "in smoke and flames" and that he and only his radioman bailed out, but the crewman's chute evidently had not functioned.
Still another Bush account given to interviewer David Frost in 1987 had prompted Chester Mierzejewski of Meriden, Conn., the tail gunner in the torpedo bomber flying just ahead of Bush's in the Chichi Jima raid, to challenge Bush's versions of what happened.
Mierzejewski, whom I interviewed in 1992 by telephone, contended there was only a brief "puff of smoke" from Bush's plane, and when Bush opened his canopy to bail out just 100 feet away from him "there was no fire." Only one man - Bush - he said, parachuted from the plane.
Avenger torpedo bombers were outfitted so that only the pilot wore a parachute. The crewmen wore harnesses and had to be given sufficient warning in order to take down chest parachutes and bail out.
"I don't know what he (Bush) was thinking at the time," said Mierzejewski, "but had he made a water landing (as pilots were trained to do on Avenger torpedo bombers) the two crewmen would have had a chance." One of the crewmen, he added, was a dear friend of his.
Mierzejewski, a political independent, said he had written Bush a questioning letter in 1987 after hearing him tell David Frost that the wings of his plane "were burning" and that one crewman got out, but he received no answer.
Several others on the same mission supported Mierzejewski's views.
A Sept. 19 column by New York Times' Nicholas Kristof brought the downing of Bush's plane in WWII back into focus, in light of the elder Bush "climbing on the Swift Boat Veterans Bandwagon."
Kristof pointed out that accusations regarding Bush's questionable conduct under fire in 1944 bubbled up in the 1988 presidential race, but failed to gain national press attention and were not used by Michael Dukakis in the campaign.
No mention was made in Bush's campaign in 1992 of him abandoning his plane and leaving his two crewmen, both older than he, to an uncertain fate.
Of course, in his 1992 race with Bill Clinton, Bush didn't have to play defense because he had Clinton's celebrated avoidance of the draft during Vietnam as his ace in the hole.
Strange that Bush's son also avoided going to Vietnam in 1968, being jumped over a long waiting list to land a coveted slot in the Texas Air Guard. Now he's running for re-election as a "war president."
It's a sad day in American politics that the younger Bush has his own father out as a surrogate to attack Kerry, who not only volunteered to go to Vietnam but served with distinction in command of incredibly dangerous little Naval vessels called swift boats.
Every single enlisted man who served under Kerry praises his heroics as their leader and supports him for president.
Too bad that Ted White and John Delaney, who were Bush Sr.'s crew members. are not around to speak.
