[P-Marlowe]

They were lucky to have electric typewriters back in 1972, much less one capable of proportional spacing and reduced sized superscript. Those machines were prohibitively expensive back then.

This is really a bad forgery. One almost has to conclude that whoever forged it wanted it to be discovered as a forgery. Or they are just too stupid for words.

[B Knotts]

One almost has to conclude that whoever forged it wanted it to be discovered as a forgery.

That is exactly the thought that has been going through my head this morning.

[xzins]

From one of the memos:

Harris gave me a message today from Grip (a headquarters unit) regarding Bush's OETR (officer efficiency training report) and Stuart is pushing to sugar coat it. Bush wasn't here during rating period and I don't have any comments from 187th in Alabama. I will not rate."

This is an explanation. "Message" is the Direct Object of the sentence. This theme is carried through and is the antecedent to the pronoun IT.

The theme is the message received from Grip. Therefore, the proper reading is this: "Stuart is pushing to sugar coat it." does not refer to Lt Bush's OETR, but it refers to the MESSAGE FROM GRIP.

Stuart is pushing to sugar coat the message from GRIP. The message from Grip probably is sarcastic about the conduct of this commander's office and his inability to decide if he'll rate Bush or not.

Stuart probably is saying, "don't take the sarcasm personally." but the Commander says, "I won't sugar coat the sarcasm about this HQ."

Instead, he's gonna finally make a decision and decide NOT to rate Lt Bush because he didn't really observe him.

I'm not convinced of the forgery theory. The military details in the documents make sense.

[connectthedots]

This is really a bad forgery. One almost has to conclude that whoever forged it wanted it to be discovered as a forgery. Or they are just too stupid for words

Desperate people do desparate things.