Bush releases military records in effort to quell controversy

The records released Friday on Bush's order are unlikely to quell charges from Democrats that he shirked his duties from May 1972 to May 1973.

The White House made public a 2.5-inch-thick stack of documents from Bush's time in the Texas National Guard in its latest effort to quash the charges.

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In addition, small groups of reporters were taken to the Roosevelt Room of the presidential mansion to review the president's contemporaneous medical records, which aides said would not to be released.

Bush avoided possible combat in Vietnam by joining the Texas Air National Guard and training as a fighter pilot, but he has been dogged lately by doubts about his last two years of service, during which he managed an unsuccessful US Senate campaign and received an early release to attend Harvard Business School.

Supporters of Democratic frontrunner Senator John Kerry happily fanned the flames, hoping to emphasize their candidate's status as a decorated and wounded Vietnam veteran and blunt Bush's self-portrait as a "war president."