Did Bush Run From The Guard To Avoid Drug Charges?

Russ Baker at The Nation says the timing of Bush's decision to leave the National Guard and his departure - about the same time that he failed to take a mandatory annual physical exam - indicate that the two may have been related.

The article notes that Bush's flight performance seemed to be degrading - he was moved from single-seater planes to twin-seaters and simulators - and that "in 1972, the military was in the process of introducing widespread drug testing as part of the annual physical exams that pilots would undergo."

The article also includes some quite stunning new revelations of drug use and wild behaviour. For example:

"One middle-aged woman whose general veracity could be confirmed told me that she met Bush in 1968 at Hemisphere 68, a fair in San Antonio, at which he tried to pick her up and offered her a white powder he was inhaling. She was then a teenager; Bush would have just graduated from Yale and have been starting the National Guard then. "He was getting really aggressive with me," she said. "I told him I'd call a policeman, and he laughed, and asked who would believe me."