With George W. Bush looking an increasingly likely Republican presidential candidate, the Texas governor's record during the Vietnam War yesterday came under renewed scrutiny with fresh allegations that family connections prevented his being sent into combat.
Mr Bush applied to join the Texan air national guard as a pilot in May 1968, when he was about to leave Yale, and 12 days before he would have lost his student's exemption from the draft, it has been claimed.
In a serialised biography of Mr Bush, the Washington Post yesterday pointed out that 350 Americans a week were dying in Vietnam at the time and that serving with the national guard "was seen as an escape route from Vietnam by many men his age, and usually had a long waiting list".
However, despite scoring only 25 per cent on the pilot aptitude test, the lowest acceptable grade, Mr Bush was sworn in on the day he applied. Mr George Bush, his father and later president, was a pro-war Republican congressman at the time. The Texan air national guard showed it was aware of the fact by staging a special swearing-in ceremony for the cameras.
Asked on the application form whether he wanted to go overseas, the young Mr Bush ticked the box which said "do not volunteer".
The "Vietnam test" has become a traditional part of US political campaigns as the country's baby-boomers have reached electable age. President Clinton's draft evasion became a festering sore in successive election campaigns.
Mr Bush has weathered analysis of his Vietnam-era record before, when he stood for election as governor of Texas, but it is bound to resurface in a widely predicted 2000 presidential duel between Mr Bush and Vice-President Al Gore. Mr Gore served in Vietnam for about a year, as a journalist with an engineering unit.
Mr Bush's former commander, Col Walter Staudt, has insisted that no strings were pulled to find Mr Bush a slot as a national guard pilot, but the Washington Post quotes Texan political veterans as saying it was common for young men with good connections to win places.
The class distinctions, which meant that most well-off young men stayed at home or in the rear echelons while working-class whites and poor blacks filled the ranks of combat units, still rankle in a country which has far from laid all the ghosts of Vietnam to rest.
A former speaker in the Texas legislature, Mr Ben Barnes, confirmed that he used to receive requests for help in gaining positions in the national guard.
Mr Barnes said he never received a request from the Bush family, but refused to comment on whether he received an inquiry from someone else on behalf of the family.
Mr Bush has always insisted that his main motivation was to become a pilot, like his war-hero father who was shot down over the Pacific during the second World War.
Mr Bush insisted he would have gone to Vietnam with his unit if it had been sent, but the Washington Post argued that there was "no chance" of his being despatched overseas.