Originally posted by OldFriend:
"Sorry, Ann Compton of WABC radio news at the top of the ten o'clock hour said it's not good enough because it doesn't show WHERE he served."
Before today they were saying that it wasn't clear that some of the documents were even George Bush's! Now that they have clean copies of the documents previously in question, now they want pay stub documents to "really" confirm Bush's National Guard related whereabouts in 1972-1973. What will they want as 'proof' next?
This was the photocopy image released by a FOIA request in 2000 of George W. Bush's 1972-1973 ARF Statement of Points Earned which led to much anti-Bush speculation that it was deliberately torn to hide the REAL name or actual dates:
This is the newly released "untorn" pristine version of the same document shown above. This is the one to which the Boston Globe story of 2/10/2004 refers. Notice how it matches up just fine:
The 'torn' version of the above ARF Statement of Points Earned document has inspired anti-Bush websites to contortions in analysis such as these following paragraphs from the website TomPaine.common sense - More Questions than Answers: Bush's Military Record under Scrutiny.
First, George matched dates of service on the document against May 1973 "special orders" calling Bush to appear for service. The three dates on the special orders not only correspond to dates on the torn attendance document, but appear in the right chronological order: we know that May was the last month in Bush's attendance reporting period, and the May special order dates appear at the end of the list of dates on the document, where they would be expected.
Second, George deduced that the fourth date on the document must have been January 10th. The tear on the document runs through the column where the month abbreviations should be. In this fourth row, before the number 10, is what appears to be an "N." This -- the only visible clue concerning the month that the service took place -- suggests that the month abbreviation for this date must be Jan or Jun. But, again, we know that Bush's service records are tracked using a calendar year that begins and ends in May. It is clear from the number sequence that, at the very least, two months have passed before the fourth date of service. Therefore, the fourth line could not be June; it must be January 10 -- if you assume the document is Bush's record.
By the same logic, the previous dates on the record could be January 6, December 14, and the first date on the record could be November 29th, a date that the Bush campaign has said (and the New York Times has confirmed) is one that he served. This is also consistent with the idea that he served no time before Election Day, while he was busy working on the Alabama campaign of W. Blount, a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Why go through such speculation when you could just order a new photocopy in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Nooooooo. That would be too hard.
This was the photocopy image released by a FOIA request in 2000 of George W. Bush's 1973-1974 ARF Statement of Points Earned:
This is the newly released "pristine" version of the same document shown above.
New photocopy document images from Calpundit.com; images now hosted on my website.
Source: Calpundit.com - February 09,2004: Documentary Evidence.
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