Posted on 09/09/2004 7:33:57 AM PDT by TastyManatees
New Questions On Bush Guard Duty
CBS) The military records of the two men running for president have become part of the political arsenal in this campaign – a tool for building up, or blowing up, each candidate’s credibility as America's next commander-in-chief.
While Sen. Kerry has been targeted for what he did in Vietnam, President Bush has been criticized for avoiding Vietnam by landing a spot in the Texas Air National Guard - and then failing to meet some of his obligations.
Did then-Lt. Bush fulfill all of his military obligations? And just how did he land that spot in the National Guard in the first place? Correspondent Dan Rather has new information on the president’s military service – and the first-ever interview with the man who says he pulled strings to get young George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.
...
But 60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file. Among them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about "how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November."
Lt. Bush tells his commander "he is working on a campaign in Alabama…. and may not have time to take his physical." Killian adds that he thinks Lt. Bush has gone over his head, and is "talking to someone upstairs."
Col. Killian died in 1984. 60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
So, if you have a Selectric Composer why don't you try reproducing the documents?
You ask why the superscript raised the poster's eyebrows? Because there were NO tiny little t-h on the typewriter, even if it WAS a proportional spaced font--something I never saw in the early 70's and I was in the typing business.
Another red flag is the perfectly centered name and address at the top of the memo. It was hell on wheels to center anything manually on a proportional typewriter, whenever they became used. This is centered perfectly, very very strange, IMO.
In the 1970s, every typewriter I used was one of those big black manuals, and I was in aerospace. Government lagged behind all technology in anything that had to do with paperwork, didn't think it necessary to upgrade perfectly good equipment for some newfangled gizmos. We used carbon paper back then!!!! If there were copy machines, I sure didn't have them in my offices.
While it is possible that this is the real deal, the little "th" the poster mentioned is a huge red flag, there was NOTHING on ANY typewriter or word processing-type typewriter that had ANYTHING even remotely like that. The use of that is real recent. When we wanted superscript or subscript, we just rolled the platen up or down, typed what we wanted, then moved the platen back. Even word processing documents, until recently (thanks to Microsoft and I think the little "th" and "rd" looks stupid anyway) didn't have the capacity to do that without a lot of work changing the size of the font, etc.
I can only speak for my own experience, but the manual typewriters we used in middle school in the mid 1970s, and the electric typewriters we used in high school a couple years later were all Courier. These were all used typewriters donated by businesses. So I learned to type on machines that were in common use from the early 1970s to the mid 1970s. You could switch between 10 cpi (characters per inch) also known as pica, and 12 cpi also known as elite. In later years we could use an even smaller font, 15 cpi. It took me a long time to get used to the computer font sizes, which get larger as the number gets larger. With typewriters, the larger the number the smaller the font.
What could cause the 2nd "M" in "MEMORANDUM" to become distorted? It couldn't happen while typing it, because that part on the typewriter is a solid object. Even if it did become bent, all following "M"s would be bent. It can't happen just by copying it. It could happen if you were using a computer graphics program to rotate the text just enough to make it look like the paper had been put into the typewriter crooked, as often was done. As you rotate the text, the pixels become skewed. It's usually not noticable, but if you don't get the right angle the first time, and you go back and forth with it, it becomes pronounced, as it is here. In at least one of the documents, part of the text is rotated and part of it isn't. In others, different parts of the text are rotated to different degrees. This could happen if you put the put the paper in and typed part of it, took it out and put it back in to type more. Or it could happen if you used a computer graphics program to rotate the text, and did it one section at a time. Since this is typed perfectly with no mistakes or corrections, I'm guessing it was typed by a perfectionist. He would not have left the paper crooked. Getting it straight is a simple thing compared to typing it out with no errors.
The acronym "NLT" is common in the military. Would anyone ever type out "not later than (NLT)?" I don't know, but I doubt it. All of my husband's papers that I've looked at are full of acronyms with no translation of what they mean. It's always a source of laughter for us when I try to read them, and make up meanings for the acronyms. None of his papers are meant to be read by civilians. All of the papers I've seen here are written for civilians.
Sink -- prove it or lose it. cal's factoid matches what I remember of the selectrics. They had quickly replacable type balls -- a lovely feature in those days -- but no proportional fonts!
Heard this briefly on KSFO560 am, the with Tom Sullivan show on KFBK 1530 am...... Blather is all blathed up!!!
thanks... this was in your face demorats time!!!
I haven't seen anyone else raise the question, but to me it seems very strange for a seasoned officer to admit in writing that he would backdate a document -- and especially in what purports to be a CYA memo.
Could the memo have been written by someone for whom backdating documents is not a big deal, i.e., someone who would also be willing to forge documents?
Above the 6, where the ^ symbol is now.
There was also a key for ½ and ¼.
But there were no curly "smart quotes."
You can find it in "character map" in "Windows accessories" ¢¢¢
Regardless, any of the ball type (and disc type) have flaws from tooling etc.. I also remember my IBM balls getting clogged with residue and I cleaned them with a needle. Where are the flaws in these memos? I don't see them? How likely is it that they were done on different typewriters. Killian didn;t type them himself. With those comments (sugar coating..going upstairs), you know damn well he typed them himself.
Here's a good explanation of kerning taken from Powerline. This is what convinced me.
---UPDATE 10: Reader Jon-Erik Prichard adds what strikes me as an especially persuasive point:
[A]nother aspect of the type on [the August 18, 1973 memo] suggests, perhaps proves, forgery.
1. The type in the document is KERNED. Kerning is the typsetter's art of spacing various letters in such a manner that they are 'grouped' for better readability. Word processors do this automatically. NO TYPEWRITER CAN PHYSICALLY DO THIS.
To explain: the letter 'O' is curved on the outside. A letter such as 'T' has indented space under its cross bar. On a typewriter if one types an 'O' next to a 'T' then both letters remain separated by their physical space. When you type the same letters on a computer next to each other the are automatically 'kerned' or 'grouped' so that their individual spaces actually overlap. e. g., TO. As one can readily see the curvature of the 'O' nestles neatly under the cross bar of the 'T'. Two good kerning examples in the alleged memo are the word 'my' in the second line where 'm' and 'y' are neatly kerned and also the word 'not' in the fourth line where the 'o' and 't' overlap empty space. A typewriter doesn't 'know' what particular letter is next to another and can't make those types of aesthetic adjustments.
2. The kerning and proportional spacing in each of the lines of type track EXACTLY with 12 point Times Roman font on a six inch margin (left justified). Inother words, the sentences break just as they would on a computer and not as they would on a typewriter. Since the type on the memo is both proportionally spaced and kerned the lines of type break at certain instances (i.e., the last word in each line of the first paragraph are - 1. running, 2. regarding, 3. rating, 4. is, 5. either). If the memo was created on a typewriter the line breaks would be at different words (e. g., the word 'running' is at the absolute outside edge of the sentence and would probably not be on the first
line).
3. The sentences have a wide variance in their AMOUNT of kerning and proportional spacing. Notice how the first line of the first paragraph seems squished together and little hard to read but the last line of the first paragraph has wider more open spacing. Even the characters themselves are squished in the first line (as a computer does automatically) and more spread out on the last line where there is more room.
There's no way a typewriter could 'set' the type in this memo and even a good typesetter using a Linotype machine of the era would have to spend hours getting this effect.---
Your right about the kerning varying from line to line. This is definitely Word, the "squishing" is a function in Word, which really annoys me, because WordPerfect doesn't do it. WordPerfect is a much better program but everybody uses Word now.
I think it's pretty clear that neither an ordinary IBM Selectric nor an ordinary IBM Executive could produce this copy.
I am still waiting for my old friend who teaches printing and collects typewriters to get home, my mother doesn't remember anything like this from her typesetting days.
Oh I am :) I often debate politics on other message boards. This news is just driving the libs on those boards nuts.
You're right. I have since caught up. Now it is all tempest and no teapot. My hats off to all the Freepers who took this ball and ran with it. They have found the REAL story in something that should never have been a story. Let's roll!!
I'd rather not!
They're rather biased, you know.
This just in...(AP)...crowd of thousands booing...
Candidate John Kerry announced today he would have done WWII "almost entirely differently". For sure, he said, he NEVER would have allowed the landing at Omaha Beach...he would have found a better beach...further South...perhaps near Casablanca...
I'm not sure what Microsoft calls it. Variable tracking? In Pagemaker or Quark Express you can adjust tracking and also hand kern.
Finally does anyone really believe that some document typed in the early seventies could be reproduced almost exactly by popping open Word and typing it out in the default 12pt Times font? So exactly that you could superimpose the documents?
CBS News is the Completely BS News.
CBS News is anchored by Ida Rather Not Tell The Truth.
Ida Rather Not Tell The Truth is Dan Rather's identical twin sister. So, it is not surprising if Ida looks like Dan in drag.
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