COLMAR, Pennsylvania, Sept 9 (AFP) - The White House on Thursday accused Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and his surrogates of being behind fresh questions about US President George W. Bush's Vietnam war-era records.
"You absolutely are seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president. The polls show Senator Kerry falling behind, and it's the same old recycled attacks that we've seen every time the president has been up for election," spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
New documents and charges that Bush had family ties to thank for his entry into the Texas National Guard, thus avoiding service in Vietnam, and may have shirked his duties, have put the president's team on the defensive.
CBS television's "60 Minutes" program reported late Wednesday that Bush, who flew jets for the guard, was grounded after skipping a physical examination in 1972 after being ordered to take it.
The report was anchored on memoranda CBS said were written by the late colonel Jerry Killian, Bush's commander in Texas.
The network also interviewed a former Democratic Texas politician who said he pulled strings to get Bush into the guard after being approached by a Bush family friend.
The former Texas governor has acknowledged that he went into the guard to avoid service in the Vietnam war, according to the Houston Chronicle.
"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes," the daily quoted him as saying in a 1994 report.