Posted on 09/08/2004 9:16:02 PM PDT by Howlin
These are the NEW documents "discovered" by CBS with conjunction with their Ben Barnes expose/confessional tonight regarding George Bush's National Guard service.
They've gotten some interesting comments on the Live Thread, so I thought I'd give them their own thread so you people out there with the knowledge can dissect them for their accuracy/truth/existence.
I don't know when the current rank abbreviations came into effect. I can say that as early as the late 70s, all ranks had specific abbreviations, and those were the only ones permitted to be used.
The military actually has a council on acronyms and abbreviations - so that there are no errors from an abbreviation for one thing being used to mean something else. As far as rank goes, you are quite correct, this is rigorously enforced.
Two comments:
1. Didn't the IBM Executive typewriter require that you type each line twice in order to use the proportional font feature? Other have stated so. Seems very unlikely a typewriter like this would have been used for these documents.
2. Apples and apples. I don't think so. The physical size and spacing of Times Roman on a 1972 IBM typewriter and Microsoft Word just might be slightly different. If you lay a Word version over the top of the "1972" document you will see that size and spacing are IDENTICAL. That just seems very unlikely to me.
No.
Good points...contact information for CBS is:
60 Minutes Spokesperson: Kelli Edwards 212-975-6795
The Fax Number for CBS News is (212) 975-1998
CBS Television Group
51 W 52nd St # 35
New York, NY 10019
(212) 975-4321
CBS News Comments
212-975-3248. (Leave a comment on the answering machine)
60 Minutes
524 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
212- 975-3247 CALL AND COMPLAIN!
60II@cbsnews.com
I've already noted that. There are just too many threads going. By the way, the th is quite different in the word processor.
"Month day year"? Not "Day month year"?
But these kinds of distortions can happen when you do multiple copies...
1. There are a lot of arguments as to why the documents are likely forgeries, and why it is implausible that they would have been typed on some high-end electric typewriter back then.
2. Plausibility considerations won't cut it in today's biased major media environment. There must be a smoking gun, absolutely incontrovertible proof of forgery, in order to have any effect.
3. If forgery is unequivocally proven, it will have a devastating blow-back effect on CBS and the Democrats who are behind the attack on Bush's National Guard record. That's why Bush supporters are so excited about that prospect, not because the contents of the documents are horribly damaging to Bush.
4. The critical clue is the superscript "th", since only a very limited set of electric typewriters could have produced that (only an IBM Executive, based on my skimming of these threads?).
5. It is easily proven (I did it myself as per instructions) that the specific document with the "th" superscript can be exactly duplicated using the default settings in Microsoft Word.
6. If other evidence rules out all possible typewriters from the above point # 4 (such as available fonts), then a smoking gun will have indeed been found.
Given what you say about the IBM Executive, I think that Drudge et al have gone way out on a limb and this is going to backfire bigtime.
After arguing that the documents are "clear forgeries" by Democratic operatives, how can, once they are proven genuine, their content be dismissed or even downplayed?
Clearly, the content is explosive enough (for some) to try to discredit it. This is contrary to the White House tack of saying it doesn't mean all that much.
These documents seem to have created panic in the GOP ranks, which is catapulting these documents to an even greater level of importance. We should have just argued that they are inconclusive and irrelevant.
Paper Falsehoods (sung to tune of Paper Roses by Marie Osmond)
I realize the ways Dan's lies deceived me
with tender looks that I mistook for truth
So take away the forgeries you gave me
the FReepers found lies and now have the proof.
Paper Falsehoods, Paper Falsehoods,
oh, how real those Falsehoods seemed to Rather.
But they're only, Imitation,
like his imitation news that's blather.
Dan thought that this would be a perfect story.
It seemed so full of promise at the start.
But like a big red rose that's made of paper,
there isn't any truth; its just Windows art.
Paper Falsehoods, Paper Falsehoods,
oh, how real those Falsehoods seemed to Rather.
But they're only, Imitation,
like his propaganda that's just blather.
LOL- yep, and that would be an old Royal "key and ribbon" job. And he didn't have a civilian secretary with an IBM Selectric Executive-- just a clerk-typist huntin'& peckin' 30wpm.
Excellent point! I also found it odd that these personal memos had no errors or corrections. Somebody typing a memo to himself wouldn't be so flawless.
Another freeper found this:
YET ANOTHER EXPERT, MORE ARGUMENTS AGAINST [09/09 03:48 PM]
Kerry Spot reader Bruce Webster who has as served as an expert witness in U.S. District Court cases regarding computer document forensics, writes in that the CBS News document "has all sorts of problems... The typefaces weren't available on typewriters in 1973."
The typefaces listed and linked below, by the way, do not have “curly” quotes, only "straight" ones. Oddly, you'll notice the CBS documents, like the Kerry Spot, have both, sometimes in the same document. (On the Kerry Spot, this is a result of transferring text from a word processing program into web-publishing program Moveable Type. (A link using curly quotes won't link correctly, which means every link has to be checked to make sure it has the right kind of quotes.)
Oh, c'mon. Bush's address of "5000 Longmont" is on numerous documents released by the White House.
Yes "Day, month, year" is correct, I got them backwards in my post (yes, I feel like an idiot). I even went so far as to pull my military records out of the safe. Every date on every record I found are in the "day, month, year" format (including my and all my superiors signatures blocks). I always thought only civilians use "month, day, year" format.
BEGINNING to get annoying? Where have you been since about 1970? :-)
One thing I noticed (others may have as well...I just haven't seen it mentioned): the "th" on 111th on the heading of the May 4 memo is not superscripted as it is in point number 2.
I can see how that might explain away the use of Word since if Word did it in number 2, why didn't it do it in the heading? On the other hand, you can ask the same question of the typewriter used.
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