Posted on 09/09/2004 7:55:59 AM PDT by pabianice
On a previous thread the author makes excellent points about the anachronism error in the "memos" the Liberals have recently "discovered" regarding George Bush's alleged "desertion" and "dereliction of duty" while in the Texas ANG.
A look at these memos shows another problem. A big problem. To understand it, you have to understand a bit about the military. In official documents of any kind, proper rank abbreviations are strictly enforced, to the point that, if they are incorrect, the document has to be destroyed and rewritten. A document forwarded with incorrect acronyms is returned for resubmittal.
The "memos" the Liberal Gang has "discovered," showing Bush to have been a shirker, all carry a consistent incorrect abbreviation for his rank. The only acceptable abbreviation for a USAF or ANG first lieutenant is "1LT." I have also seen, rarely, it written "1/LT," although this is the exception. All the "recently discovered" memos about Bush say "1stLt." While I am Navy and not Air Force, to the best of my knowledge, this is not allowed, let alone a mispunctuated memo addressed to Bush as "1stLt.3244754FG."
I am willing to bet a week's pay that these memos are forgeries.
> Guys this memo will go no where because bush didnt
> make his service an issue.
Which is why the content is irrelevant.
If these are fakes, what else from the Kerry Kamp is fake?
If fakes, the public needs to know about the near-criminal
negligence (or deliberate malice) of CBS.
And just how did the fakes get into the archives? Berger?
Look to the office and look to the clerk typist. Also, what was correct about 40 years ago could change slightly. I started my career with the Navy BuPers years ago on the top floor with no ceiling just pipes running across the ceiling. The majority of the floor was covered with file cabinets and reams of paper. Even though the Navy didn't have that type of rank, I did see paperwork with 1st LT (also 1st Lieutenant), etc. Typists (GS 1 or 2) could add anything and if the supervisor wasn't looking it would pass. The old saying was things were the right way, the wrong way and the government way.
My husband said the same thing about the abbreviations. The web of deceit will spin itself into one big heap of crap.
Bush will not make a big thing of this and get mad and be bitter and angry, which would keep it in the news, he'll go on about his business campaigning.
OTH, if CBS has forgeries then the onus goes on CBS. Are they forgeries? Where'd they get them? Did they or someone who works for them create them? This goes to the believability of CBS not Bush.
1stLt is a USMC abbreviation. 1LT is a USAF/ANG thang. This smells.
Great point....
These abbreviations are second nature. A new butter bar might mess it up, but not an LTC.
On Bush's request for discharge of 5Sep73 and 6Sep73, which has been out there previously and is clearly not a forgery, he is identified under his signature as "1st Lt".
http://users.cis.net/coldfeet/doc27.gif
I posted on another thread that the print style and font of these new CBS memos do not look at all like the other contemporaneous documents from that same time frame.
It is not just the proportional font, but also the strange use of superscripts.
See he "111th" on parts of the May 4 72 memo, where in the letterhead area it is standard sized type but a true superscript later (smaller and raised) on the same document under item number 2.
Looking at post 25 in the other thread, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210987/posts ...
If Geo. W. Bush typed that letter in the early '70s he did it in an insurance company hq or a bank main branch. No way would you find a fancy IBM machine in a NG office in those days. Folks just need to dig out other correspondence from that time and place and compare. I'm betting paperwork would be pounded out on a manual in '73.
Plus, the request and the response are aligned very prettily and look to have been typed on the same machine at the same time. No plausible scenario for that. It's not like a fellow could walk in and dictate to his commander's typist...But, dang, you would think people would forge this sort of junk more cleverly! Is it that hard to find a couple of old typewriters?
The 18 August Memo
187th has a superscripted 'th'
Let me say that again ... somehow in 1972 the T-ANG had sophisticated WP equipment that allowed a simple memo to file to contain a SUPERSCRIPTED 'th' .... details people .. details ...
Nope, total bull. An officer's rank abbreviation is as familiar to an officer as his birthday or wife's name. It becomes so ingrained to use the correct abbreviation (a dozen times a day for years and years) that an incorrect use stands out like a red flag.
Same with dates: the military way is 13 JUN 75, no other way. Any other order than this is another red flag. Not JUNE, not JNE. It's a certain military abbreviation, and no other, same way with rank abbreviations.
And Dan Rather was so horny for this story to be true that he just F****d a Texas horned toad.
from link...
The IBM Executive typewriter I found at a garage sale was magnificent, and (having been long since replaced by the Selectric), dirt cheap. Only somebody with a PhD in secretarial skills could operate it. It was a proportional spacing machine: an 'm' was five spaces wide, an 'i' was two. There were two separate space bars (two and three spaces respectively). To correct a mistake, you had to know the width of all the characters involved so that you could backspace the appropriate amount (backspace was the only single-space key on the machine). There was an arcane procedure for producing justified type which involved typing a page a first time (while using a special guide to measure where the lines ended), noting the extra spaces that needed to be added, marking the copy to show where two-width spaces would be replaced with three-width spaces (or, in the worst case, two two-width spaces), and typing the page a second time.
Do you really believe that anyone went to this bizarre extent on a memorandum in 1972? I sure don't. It beggers belief.
Occam's Razor says this is a forgery, and the forger didn't account for the proportional spacing promblem between a 1972 memo and one forged on a PC in 2004.
I agree. I used to send memos and letters back for retyping for these kind of mistakes - because I knew full well that HQ would ding us over it. Rank was either spelled out completely, ie "Colonel", OR the proper abbreviation, ie "COL" was used ---- no exceptions, no time, no where, no way!
Good catch.
As a former pusher of USMC paper, concur with all of your remarks. There's the right way, the wrong way, the Navy way, the Marine Corps way, the Army way, and the Air Force way. The "1stLt" is the Marine version; the USAF version is "1LT."
What really beggars belief is that a memo with a subject of "CYA" would be missed until now.
And from a conveniently dead person.
Remember the forged flyer supposedly from the Swiftees and even more supposedly picked up at RNC headquarters?
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