AFAIK the 40,000 troops have already been activated and/or notified and this supervisor was just one of them. So it's not a matter of if Bush can or cannot, it is a matter of he has.
I don't blame Bush for anything except the fact that we were told the wrong reasons by his admin for invading Iraq which really killed his credibility. It has been on the books for sometime and I remember when I lived near Fort Hood in Texas several years before we invaded Iraq. Tanks were just rolling out of Fort Hood and they were on the firing range every night...keeping me up till the wee hours in the morning. I knew something was up then but did not know what it was. So even if 9/11 had not have happened we still would be in Iraq...but we would have been told the real reasons instead of using 9/11 to mask them.
I'm not against going into Iraq but I am not happy with being lied to as to the reasons, not having a clear cut mission while we have been there, and a total failure of listening to our military leaders who are telling the 'suits' and the politicians what needs to be done and how....and yet it falls on deaf ears.
It is our military this time saying we need to change strategies unlike during Vietnam when our military would not admit their current strategy was simply failing. They have more than admitted this and yet they are not given any new mission. We need direction and goals in Iraq instead of a blanket 'fight terror' which suspiciously sounds like a modern day police action instead of a mission oriented military operation. Police actions never work and just get good soldiers killed.