Saturday, September 11, 2004

The Physical

From a commenter:

As a former military pilot familiar with such things, I am almost certain that Bush's flight physical did not include a drug test. (They never did with me.) You see, a flight physical is scheduled well in advance, negating any possiblity of catching someone's illigal drug usage. A drug test is always unscheduled...it has to be in order to catch a drug user off-guard. The only need for the urine speciman in a flight physical is to check for sugar in the urine and that sort of thing. Sorry, no conspiracy.

Sounds convincing to me.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think so. I believe the random drug-testing was performed during the flight physical, something new the early 70's. Remember the popularity of illegal drugs during this period; the military had a very limited interest in thinning its ranks, but didn't want to appear to approve drug use. If a pilot could clean up for his physical, he wasn't a problem.

Anonymous said...

My understanding is that Bush's annual physical was in July of each year. Yet he was ordered -- and skipped -- a physical scheduled for May. Perhaps the May physical was the unnplanned one meant to catch drug users. Just a thought.

Disclaimer: I'm not sure that Bush actually had all of his physicals in July. (I read it somewhere, but can't find a source.) I am sure about the May physical, but only insofar as it is contained within the heavily disputed Killian memos. So I'm not sure how much of a source *that* is.

Anonymous said...

Military pilots (along with private pilots) need to get that annual physical in order to get their license stamped for another year.
By that time I'm sure GW knew he wasn't going to slipping the surly bonds of earth anymore for the Guard.
Ever wonder why the bonds were so surly?