This is our President.

Bill Clinton lied. Yup. He lied right to your face, and my face, and everyones' faces. He lied about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. He was impeached over it. In the late 60s and early 70s, George W. Bush was supposedly, ostensibly a member of the Texas Air National Guard. But did he fulfill his obligation? Caveat: During Vietnam, Guardsmen did not get sent to Vietnam. The Guard of today (where men and women who intend to serve one weekend a month and two weeks a year end up spending over a year in Fallujah) is not the Guard of yesteryear. In no way does this information about Bush, and the insinuations about him avoiding service in Vietnam, have any affect or reflect poorly on the men and women serving in the Guard today. The Boston Globe re-examined some documents about Bush and his commitment to the TANG. Indeed, he was given leave to work on a campaign in Alabama, and to attend Harvard (!) Business School in Massachusetts during his time with the Guard. If he did not successfully meet his obligation, he could be sanctioned. He could have been sent to active duty for 24 months. So what do the records reflect?

"He broke his contract with the United States government -- without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen,' Lechliter said in an interview yesterday. ''He was a pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to an even higher standard.' Even retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel chief who vouched for Bush at the White House's request in February, agreed that Bush walked away from his obligation to join a reserve unit in the Boston area when he moved to Cambridge in September 1973. By not joining a unit in Massachusetts, Lloyd said in an interview last month, Bush ''took a chance that he could be called up for active duty. But the war was winding down, and he probably knew that the Air Force was not enforcing the penalty.' But Lloyd said that singling out Bush for criticism is unfair. ''There were hundreds of guys like him who did the same thing,' he said. Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs in the Reagan administration, said after studying many of the documents that it is clear to him that Bush ''gamed the system.' And he agreed with Lloyd that Bush was not alone in doing so. ''If I cheat on my income tax and don't get caught, I'm still cheating on my income tax,' Korb said. After his own review, Korb said Bush could have been ordered to active duty for missing more than 10 percent of his required drills in any given year. Bush, according to the records, fell shy of that obligation in two successive fiscal years.

What a Patriot. What a Great American. Thank you, George W. Bush. Thank you for "gaming the system." Thank you for ensuring that other mens' sons do the fighting for you. Thank you for "cheating."