When Bush finally dumped a bunch of documents on us hoping to quiet all the "AWOL" accusations, he didn’t include the payroll records from the third quarter of 1972. That time period was controversial — it was when Bush never showed up for his physical, when Bush was grounded, and when Bush apparently went to Alabama to work on a campaign.

"Oh, well" people like me said. "We’ll wait for the records. I mean they have to be somewhere".

Well guess what? We learn today that "certain" microfilm records, including Bush’s payroll records for that crucial quarter, "had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm."

Too bad. The evidence that could have shut people like me up — that would have proven conclusively that Bush completed his National Guard training — it’s been "inadvertantly destroyed". Tsk tsk.

Somewhere Nixon is saying "I say . . . Good show, ol’ boy! Well done!" (I’m assuming Nixon acquired an uppercrust British accent in the afterlife).

UPDATE: Corrente, among others, notes that only two weeks ago, an AP lawyer sueing to get the microfilm was told that the microfilm "did indeed exist"!