Posted on 09/08/2004 11:24:27 AM PDT by jaycost
The New York Times, as many of you know, has a 36 page document by Gerald A. Lechliter explaining why George W. Bush did not meet his expectations at the Air National Guard. Lechliter is also a key source for the Boston Globe story out today. The argument, as best I can tell, comes in two parts:
1. Geroge W. Bush was required to obtain a certain number of "points" to fulfill his guard duty. He failed to do this.
2. George W. Bush was required to regularly attend drills to fulfill his guard duty. He also failed to do this.
I say "as best I can tell" because this essay is an absolutely turgid mess. It would make Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein blush for its unintelligibility. I believe this murkiness is intentionally designed so that nobody can evaluate the substantive points of the piece.
Here is why I think this.
Lechliter engages, from nearly moment one, in an attempt to overwhlem the reader with abbreviations. The effect is that, by page four, the reader is literally overwhelmed and is incapable of comprehending any of his substantive points. It is interesting the extent to which Lechliter uses acronyms. For instance, he reduces Harvard Business School to "HBO." He reduces Air Force Manual to "ABO." You get the drift. He reduces Air National Guard to "ANG." Ultimately, his stences read like the following: "It also stated that his inability to participate satisfactorily in the ANG could result in his dischage from the ANG, assignment to ARPC (ORS), and call to active duty for up to 24 months considering all previous active duty and ACDUTRA, if he still had an MSO."
Did you catch all that?
What is the significance of this? Well, there are two primary uses for abbreviations: 1. To clarify a written work by shortening its length and 2. To *obfuscate* a written work by making it appear to be virtually encoded and therefore unintelligible. You can tell which intention an author has depending upon how many abbreviations he uses and what he chooses to abbreviate. Lechliter has chosen to abbreviate virtually anything and everything that might be construed as a proper noun, all the way down to stuff like "active duty."
This is not using "legalese," though given his frequent citation of US Code, among other things, Lechliter seems intent on making it seem like legalese. Legalese is the language that lawyers speak/write to one another. It is confusing, but it is a common language, shared between parties. It is theoretically intelligible. Lechliter's frequent and unnecessary use of abbreviations is effectively designed to make it so that nobody except Lechliter himself can understand what he is saying.
Ultimately, then, the work is impossible to read...except, surprise, surprise, the conclusion. THAT is crystal clear and quite sensational: "My research confirms the conclusions about Bush's military service...(of) The Boston Globe."
That is a nifty effect, don't you think? Overwhelm somebody with unnecessarily technical talk so that they do what all people do (skip to the end) and then just give them the shocking and powerful conclusion. Of course, Lechliter is too clever by half. By writing the conclusion with such clear language, he indicates that he is capable of writing with clear language, and therefore he chose not to make the body of his work clear.
This is not all to be said about this essay. Lechliter manages occassional moments of clarity in the body of the essay, and in those moments he wastes no time in maximizing the shock value. He throws a few good bombs and holds Dubya to ridiculously high standards. For instance, he subtly accuses Dan Bartlett -- White House Communications Direction -- of doctoring the records. He would like to see a forensic evaluation of the original file. Nice, huh?
He also uses against George W. Bush his autobiography, in which he says that he continued flying for "for the next several years" after his first solo flight. "A-HA!" Lechliter responds: "Bush stopped flying with his unit in April 1972, about 22 months after he finished training on the F-102. Any standard dictionary defines the word "several" as more than two. The record clearly shows Bush did not fly several years." That my friends, seems like a smoking gun, does it not?
KEY POINT: If Lechliter is so ridiculous when he writes clearly, why should we not assume that he is equally ridiculous when he writes murkily?
So, the media is principally relying on this guy Lechliter who: 1. Writes in a way that is impossible to understand. 2. Accuses Dan Bartlett of a federal crime. 3. Is picking nits so intensely that an obsessive-compulsive nit-picker would say, "Hey! Stop picking those nits, man!"
Conclusion: It is impossible for me to evaluate Lechliter's substantive points about Dubya's guard service. But it seems to me that that is precisely Lechliter's intent here. That seems to me to be sufficient ground for looking at this report with supreme skepticism. The fact that when Lechliter's murky prose becomes clear and readable only when he makes ridiculous claims underscores this skepticism.
PREDICTION: The Boston Globe, the New York Times and the rest of the Gang of 500 is going to go nuts over this kind of stuff. They're going to lap it up...skimming the text and blithely assuming that its conclusion necessarily follows from it. This is clearly what the Globe has done today. Expect more of the same.
This murkiness, by the way, makes it difficult for the Bushies to dispute it. First, they'd have to understand it. Second, they'd have to package their response to this murkiness in a clear manner, something that is never easy. My guess is that they will instead lump this Lechliter stuff with the Kitty Kelly book and this Barnes guy being a top Kerry donor. They'll also argue that we have covered this ground before. This is good strategy that is not dishonest. What else can they do?
Other interesting points:
1. Lechliter now has a website that seems to have been created in the last 24 hours with only one page, which contains this document.
2. On November , Lechliter (who claims to be a political independent) writes that Iraq is not a quagmire like Vietnam. It is a quagmire like Afghanistan. Nice, huh? In this essay he directly compares the United States to Soviet Russia in both action and intent: "A superpower, in defiance of most world opinion, invades an Islamic Middle Eastern nation. The superpower is hoping to effect regime change and, citing an “imminent threat,” declares the invasion “an international duty.”" Free Republic noted this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1014842/posts
3. Lechliter is an "endorser" for "Veterans Against the Iraq War."
4. Lechliter claims to be an "Indendepnt." That he capitalizes the "i" in the word indicates to me, in light of the above point, that he is registered indepenedent but has a nice lefty ax to grind, i.e. he is Independent, not independent.
5. Lechliter makes the following comment about Bush's record in this essay about his guard service: "Since 9-11, he has wrapped himself in the flag to push forward a domestic agenda that is anything but compassionate." So, Bush has used patriotism to advance a radical right wing agenda, Gerald? Bush is a demagogue, then? Have you been to many Dean rallies lately, Mr. Independent?
6. Lechliter was writing letters to Salon praising their work on the National Guard story all the way back in February. There he was insisting that Bush should release his guard records.
7. Lechliter has also written to The Washington Monthly over the same issue as he wrote to Salon. The Washington Monthly has had the same ax to grind as Salon on this issue for years.
8. One "Gerald Lechliter" wrote a letter to the FDA in which he wrote, "I am outraged by your new policies on genetically engineered (GE)foods. Despite overwhelming consumer demand, your agency still fails to require safety testing and mandatory labeling for GE foods." Is this our boy, Gerald A. Lechliter? I am not sure, but note the egregious abbreviation. Do we really need to abbreviate "genetically engineered," Gerry? This as well as a few other hits on Google about Gerry making FOIA requests leads me to wonder if he is not a "consume advocate" or something Naderite like that.
What do you make of this??????
Welcome to FR.
It is my understanding that all Bush had to do was earn 50 points per year to meet his obligation. Bush apparently had a 3-month and and 6-month period where he did not earn any points, but he greatly exceeded the 50 point requirement every year except the last year where he only had 53 points. This is just a story to get the treasonous acts of Kerry off the front page, such as Kerry being in a leadership role in a group that was actively training to kill Senators and other leaders. Kerry lying about not being at certain meeting where they voted to target certain leaders, but fbi files which say Kerry was.
I'm content to let the Democrats & MSM recycle their tired old charges & simply let the voters decide in November.
This is a dead end issue for them if there ever was one. We shouldn't lend our voices to it.
The key points that Lechliter propose, as best I understand, is that there were some transcription errors in recording Bush's acquisition of points AND that he was required to attend drills with more frequency than he did. So, he is offering a refutation of Byron York's piece, as well as proposing a point that York had not considered.
I am incapable of evaluating the substance of this argument because Lechliter intentionally writes in such a way to make evaluation impossible. That fact combined with who Lechliter is and what he does say clearly, however, compels me to evaluate Lechliter negatively.
As to why the Globe and Times are pushing this story, I do not think it is to keep Kerry's service off the front page. They can do that, and have been doing that, without aid of this story. I believe that they are doing this to change the general story of this campaign. This last week it has been: "Bush surges as Kerry stumbles." The Globe and Times -- who undoubtedly have had this "information" at their disposal for awhile and have chosen to launch this attack now -- intend to change the story away from the Bush surge so as to effect a momentum change in this campaign.
Welcome to Free Republic, J.
You're a busy guy, with two VERY GOOD posts on your first day.
I really don't see who the other side thinks it can affect by beating this old dead horse. Maybe they just do it so we'll have something to research. Baffling.
So the Globe's big expert is a military retiree no one has ever heard of? It sounds like there's some major debunking here, considering there are any number of more prominent names you could trot out to lend credence to such an assesment...or would no more prominent names put their name to such a thing?
I think that is a good point.
There is a seeming randomness to these arguments in the Globe and Times, isn't there? They trot out random dudes who should "GOTCHA!"
This is made more interesting by the fact that these guys are not in actuality random; they are just made to seem that way. At least Lechliter isn't. We know A. He has a political ax to grind against the Bush agenda; B. He has an ax to grind against Bush personally (i.e. used patriotism to push American to the right); C. Had pre-judged the Bush record in the cyber-pages of Salon and the Washington Monthly BEFORE these records emerged.
My father was in the Air National Guard for 22 years. He ROUTINELY "made up" his drills due to work commitments. In fact, they PREFERED that because he got more legitimate work done during the week. Also, you can go or perform a week or two AT A TIME..which would count as 5-6 months of drill days. This entire thing is laughable...and the fact that no one has explained how it works in the media is sad.
If you were to, for example, go on a 3 week training exercise in addition to your "two weeks' Obligation, you can, with approval, do your entire YEAR essentially at once. There is NOTHING wrong with that, in fact it is a VITAL part of the current system when they need fill ins for a week or two.
Exactly.....they are in full battle mode to make the story Bush is AWOL rather than Kerry is Unfit......BUMP
Excellent post........ Welcome Aboard!
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000625709
This is an article in Editor and Publisher magazine about the writer of this piece, Edward Robinson. He claims that they took this long to write this piece because it took so long for them to research it.
"We are talking about several hundred pages of records that most people would not understand because they use a lot of military parlance," Robinson said. "That means it takes a lot of effort."
That's interesting, isn't it...because ON THE SAME DAY a single guy, Gerald A. Lechliter, comes out with a 36 page essay that essentially makes the precisely IDENTICAL claim. So, what's wrong with the Globe that it took five of them EXACTLY as much time as it took this one guy. What kind of coincidence is this, by the way, that Lechliter worked EXACTLY five times faster than the Globe? And, what's more, they were obviously in contact with Lechliter before this story was written. Didn't they realize they and Lechliter were doing duplicate work?
So, you can believe that, or you can believe the alternative hypothesis: Lechliter did this work himself, and came to the Globe a few days ago. The Globe "researched" his work and published it today ("researched" here meaning skimmed it for general effect, patent absurdity, and found a few other dudes who would go along with the story). The work, and therefore the timing, is entirely Gerald "The Soviets are no better than Bush" Lechliter's.
If anybody believes the former, I have a bridge I'd like to see you...
If not...allow me to make the introductions:
Press, I would like to introduce you to disgusting bias. Disgusting bias, meet press!
Welcome to FreeRepublic.com, jaycost.Other posts on this subject:
08-26-2004
Bush Guard Service, The True Story08-26-2004
The Facts about Bush and the National Guard
- The Democratic charges fall apart07-18-2004
Q and A- F-102, Vietnam & George W. Bush01-24-2004
Bush 'Desertion' Charge Debunked11-17-2002
What did Dubya do in the war, daddy?10-15-2000
The Real Military Record of George W. Bush:
Not Heroic, but Not AWOL, EitherJuly 28, 1999
At Height of Vietnam, Bush Picks Guard
(Washington Post article)
The problem with this whole stupid argument and especially Lechliter is that if you havent served in the guard or the reserves you wouldnt understand how you earn points.
1. You can earn enough points to have a valid year and STILL have a few AWOLS. The vice versa is true also, you can come up short on points and never be AWOL and still have a bad year.
2. You do not have to attend all drills if you have an excused absence. You can make up missed drills by RTS'ing or a similar accepted time allowed by a commander.
3. It is impossible to receive a DD214 with a honorable discharge and be AWOL at the time of issuance. If you have an AWOL or two you will receive a general or other than honarable discharge (unless you are released due to a unsat then it may be a dishonorable which is highly unlikely in the reserves)if you received a other than honorable or a general disharge then you must wait until your initial contract is expired to have your record reviewed and your discharge upgraded.
The dims never have asked the right people. Gen McPeak, Kerry, Mighty Midget Gen formerly Supreme NATO Attempted WW3 Starting Clarke would not know this, it isnt part of there jobs and they never served in the reserves and or guards.
You haven't refuted anything, just cast aspersions on the messenger. But to repeat what I've said elsewhere, I don't think the general public gives a damn about any of this. They see it (and the Swift boat stuff) as mostly partisan mudslinging, maybe with a grain of truth, i.e., maybe Bush got off with some slacking at the end of his service and maybe Kerry got one of his medals under questionable circumstances. But that same public twice voted for Clinton who had no military service, so it's clearly not something the public puts a whole lot of value in. All in all, this whole issue probably helps Bush more than Kerry, which is why I think the Dems are idiots to put so much energy into it. It helps Bush because it takes the debate away from areas where he's vulnerable, e.g., the deficit, health care, and Iraq. But maybe the reason the Dems can't give this up is that they are obsessed with Bush and MUST smear and denigrate him, even against their own best interests.
"You haven't refuted anything, just cast asperions on the messenger." The implication here is that what I have said is generally an ad hoc attack and not relevant to the substance (the "anything" which requires refutation). I humbly disagree. I have raised legitimate (i.e. probitive and not prejudicial) quesitons about who this guy is and I have raised legitimate questions about the method he uses.
1. Lechliter is the one who opens himself up to questions about from where he comes. He claims at the outset of his piece that he is an "Independent" who has voted for Republicans and Democrats in the past. By pointing out Lechliter's origins I am effectively impeaching his testimony. He wants us to think that he has absolutely no political axes in 2004 -- but the fact is that nothing could be further from the truth. He is not the independent he wants us to think he is. He has, by the time we get to the end of the FIRST PAGE, misrepresented himself. I think that is supremely relevant.
2. Before we produce any kind of substantial work, we must have a method by which we produce that. Thus, the method is the first thing that the skeptic should investigate. We must answer methodological questions before substantive ones. That is what I have done here. There are legitimate methodological problems with his work. It is *impossible* to read. I am not being apocrphyal. It almost literally reads: "I am an Independent...blah, blah, blah...Dan Bartlett might have broken the law...Bush lied in his autobiography...The Boston Globe is right." Methodological critisms like these are extremely relevant. Before we evaluate anybody's argument, we must first evaluate the method by which that person arrives at that argument. Lechliter's method is so frustratingly abstrue (and obviously intentional in that regard) that we cannot profitably discuss the substance of his points.
Start at the beginning and work through to the end.
May 68
Jun 68
Jul 68
Aug 68
Sep 68
Oct 68
Nov 68
Dec 68
Jan 69
Feb 69
Mar 69
Apr 69
etc.
All the way to May 74.
The chart should have a link for each month demonstrating Pres. Bush's location, points, proof.
That chart will end this discussion once and for all.
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