Peter Jennings quizzing Wes Clark about Michael Moore:

At one point Mr. Moore, said in front of you that President Bush, he was saying he’d like to see a debate between you the General and President Bush who he called a deserter. Now that’s a reckless charge not supported by the facts so I was curious to know why you didn’t contradict him and whether or not you think it would have been a better example of ethical behavior to have done so.

Clark did a good job of answering the question, admitting he didn’t know the specifics but that the charge was irrelevant to his campaign. I imagine he’s read the articles about Bush not showing up for a year of national guard duty, but it was obvious from the question that whatever Clark said would be dismissed as rantings from the tin-foil hat community.

It’s a documented fact that Bush was AWOL. The term “deserter” was used by Moore as a term of art, AWOL is probably more applicable. Why is this claim suddenly a surprise? Will reporters finally be taking another look at it? (I noticed Drudge has a quote from Kerry during the last campaign bringing it up, since Drudge isn’t a reporter so much as an aggregator that doesn’t count.)

Michael Moore has a great collection of evidence on this page at his site.

Also the Straight Dope has an article summing it all up.

Richard Belzer had a great line on Real Time with Bill Maher the other night- someone had mentioned that Dean was skiing while Vietnam was going on and Bush was in the National Guard. After pointing out that Bush was AWOL from the guard, the Belz also pointed out that Bush was, “dealing with a different type of snow.”