Perhaps I'm wrong

but I think the Bush interview this morning was largely worthless.

While I don't believe Tim Russert did a horrible job, he clearly wasn't inclined to push Mr. Bush on so many different issues he could have and should have raised or pursued. However, if we each got a dollar for everytime Mr. Bush said the word "context", we could make a dent in Mr. Bush's debt creation.

At the end, where he was asked about his military service, I grew pretty angry. For the record, or.. to use Mr. Bush's phrase... to put into context, I'm not sure Mr. Bush's military record is by itself a huge deal. However, when placed in the context in which Mr. Bush has donned military gear (when multi-star general Dwight Eisenhower did not), loved to bask in his role of Commander in Chief, and insist that hundreds of thousands of lives be put on the line for what seem (to me) to be questionable wars, the military record becomes a more important issue.

He said this morning (basically) that he doesn't have the evidence to prove that he served properly but that if he had not, he would not have been granted an honorable discharge. That's not true, however. Mr. Bush did not qualify to become a Lieutenant (his rating as a pilot was poor and he did the minimum necessary in any situation) but he was promoted anyway. Strings were pulled to allow Mr. Bush to get into the Guard rather than go to Vietnam. He got deference to leave the guard to work on a campaign that others wouldn't have been granted.

So to say that he couldn't have gotten an honorable discharge unless he fulfilled his duty is nonsense. Exceptions have been made for him throughout his privileged life.

And to say, as the nation's commander in chief and the ultimate holder of the keys to his records, that the press is welcome to investigate his records which now seem to be missing is ridiculous.

I was also struck by the times Mr. Bush said today, "I don't blame anybody." Perhaps he doesn't. But he takes no responsibility for anything. He wants all the power and none of the accountability. If someone has ever heard him say he was wrong about anything, I'd love to know. I certainly have never heard it. And I was annoyed that he called Vietnam a political war - different from his, of course - and that he would have been glad to serve if he'd been called up. If so, why did he work so hard to avoid that service?

I was a child during the Vietnam war and I saw several family members or the family members of school friends called up when some of them did not believe in Vietnam either. Not all of them came home. I watched what it did to my mother when she would hear a news report of GIs hurt or killed, as she wondered whether it was her son or the son of someone else she knew.