USPO stood for United States Post Office. That was its official name up until 1970, when Congress "privatized" it and renamed it the United States Postal Service (USPS).
New stamps all said USPS on the bottom. But they kept using the old ones until they wore out.
Now put yourself in the forger's shoes. He needs a stamp. Either USPO or USPS will do. However, the ones lying around all say USPS and have those pesky 2000's year plugs.
Now, he might have got lucky and found an old USPO stamp. But that stamp would obviously have a 19xx year plug, wouldn't it?
At worst, he might have had to cut the year off of, say, a 1983 stamp and replace it with a flipped 08 from a current stamp. But, in that case, the 19 would show as it should.
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This is mirse. I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you are trying to say above.
1. Are you saying that if Obama's Selective Service application was a fake, it should read "USPS" at the bottom instead of the "USPO" that we see, because the Postal Service changed its name in 1970 and no post office site in the country used "USPO" stamps in 1980?
2. That is, I don't understand why Obama's Selective Service form was stamped in Hawaii with a 1980 date and with the "USPO" stamp on the bottom, if the Postal Service changed its name in 1970 to United States Postal Service.
3. Shouldn't the bottom of Obama's form, if authentic, read "USPS" instead of "USPO" that we see, if it was indeed stamped on Jul 29, '80?
4.Also, do you have any samples of legitimate documents that have the "1980" date stamp with the "USPS"---United States Postal Service---on the bottom?
Thanks.
I am theorizing that all the USPO stamps had been phased out by the 2000s. Therefore, if a forger got hold of an old USPO stamp, it would have already contained a 19xx year insert. That is, the 19 would have already been there, and the forger would at most have had to change the year part to get 1980. No need for the suspicion-raising missing 19.
On the other hand, if the forger had used a modern USPS stamp, then he would have needed to find a 19 somewhere or do without. (The form could validly have had either a USPO or a USPS stamp, since both were in use in 1980.) But since the form has an old USPO stamp, it shouldn't have been a problem to get a 19.
Seems a more likely hypothesis is, simply, the document is genuine, and a broken (or improperly inked) stamp was used.
Same logic applies to the date discrepancy, by the way. A forger would not make that mistake. Whereas Obama was probably more interested in making the O in his sig resemble a peace symbol than getting the date right.
In any case, a real investigation would need to go beyond the document itself. There must be computer files of draft registrants, for instance. Is Obama's on file? Is there an audit trail as to when it was added? There must be backups of the computer file. Is Obama's registration on the backups? To guarantee success, a forger would have to have such bases covered (and not leave tracks doing the covering).