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Bush Service Memos Questioned
Twirlip of the Mists writes "Last night, CBS News released a set of memos dated 1972 and 1973 that are purported to raise questions about President Bush's National Guard service. Some are saying those memos might have been produced with a computer. Blogger Scott Johnson ran with the story first this morning, raising questions about the typography of the memos. Blogger Charles Johnson (no relation) went one step further, actually reproducing one of the memos in its entirety using Microsoft Word's default settings.
Matt Drudge is running the story now with a link to a CNS News article that includes quotes from typography experts at font foundries Afga Monotype and Bitstream.
There's a round-up of key facts about the story on this blogger's web site." The experts in the CNS News story and others could come to no conclusion, and even if the documents are not originals or photocopies of originals, that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't faithfully retyped copies of originals. CBS continues to assert the documents are authentic.
Wow, so anything not denied is automatically true
Presumption of innocence kind of when out the window when multiple primary witnesses and supporting documents were produced by a reputable news agency. Your statement is akin to a defendant reminding the jury of his presumed innocence after evidence of his guilt was introduced.
Well, that's technically correct now that that guy resigned.
You wanna drag Ben Ginsberg into this? Fine. Then explain Neil Reiff. Reiff is the chief counsel for Move On and the deputy general counsel for the DNC. So if Ben Ginsberg did something wrong by advising both the Bush administration and SBVFT, then Neil Reiff and the DNC are culpable too.
Sauce for the goose, right?
But the White House, despite calls from McCain to do so, has never denounced the Swift Boat ads.
Um. No, that's not true. On August 23, the president denounced the SBVFT ads as well as all soft-money advertising.
Kerry isn't going to say he respects Bush's service, because he doesn't. Who the fuck would?
Ah. And there we see the difference, don't we?
Even if he didn't pull connections, if he didn't go AWOL, (he can't find anyone willing to go on record and deny either of those)
They were all denied during the 2000 campaign. Denied, debunked and dismissed. How short your memory is.
It wasn't even the principled wuss road of simple desertion or civil disobediance--he went along with the system, but didn't stick his neck out to defend it.
So you'd rather the president desert his post than opt for homeland service instead of service overseas? Okay. That tells me everything I need to know about you.
I write in my journal
yeh, its a good thing that other records fro shrub dont contain the exact same font, with the mysterious superscript th
you're a fucking liar.
... hi bingo
what's your problem with the Move On ads?
Is this supposed to be a funny, funny joke?
The problem with the SBVFT ads are that they are airing blatant lies
Nope. Not one statement made by SBVFT has been shown to be false. And lord knows folks have tried.
Also the president explicitly did NOT denounce the ad
What do you want him to do? Say "I renounce thee" three times? Say that the Swift Vets ads are bad but everybody else's is okay? He said he denounces these ads and all other soft-money issue ads. Deal.
Most importantly, the Bush connection is not just Ben Ginsburg but also Kenneth Cordier, Merrie Spaeth, and, less directly, Karl Rove.
You're ignoring the point. If Ben Ginsburg is a "connection" then Neil Reiff is a "connection."
There is absolutely no connection between SBVFT and the GOP, the White House or the Bush campaign. None whatsoever. The most motivated journalists in America have dug and dug and dug and found nothing, because there's nothing to be found.
Finally, you keep claiming that Bush "denied, debunked, and dismissed" these claims in 2000, yet NOBODY has stepped forward to tell anyone what Bush was actually doing during his missing year.
What "missing year?" There was no missing year? We have records of the President's National Guard service from 1968 to 1973, all five years of his service.
Which really wouldn't bother me so much if he and Cheney were not painting him as some kind of freaking war hero
Find me one statement that anybody in the administration or the campaign has made to that effect. Just one.
You're confusing your candidates again.
All the while supporting the aspersions cast on Kerry's war record.
Sigh. Nobody from the administration or the campaign has ever said anything negative about Kerry's war record. The people casting aspersions are (1) the vets who served with him, and (2) the vets who got pissed off at the things he said when he came home. (These two groups overlap significantly.)
By the way, Cheney's comment that voting for Kerry will lead to terrorism in the US
Not what he said. Please stop getting your news from the Daily Kos.
The text of the quote: "Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us."
If you're not bright enough to understand that, then maybe you ought to just bow out of this whole thing and leave the politics to us grown-ups.
I write in my journal
They all have been shown to be false.
...well, than you do. What he said was that he denounced them: they're bad for the process, as are all soft-money issue ads.
Wrongo.
You have a doctor claiming to have treated Kerry's wounds whose name appears nowhere on the records.
Um. That's not accurate at all. Lt. Cmdr. Letson is mentioned in all the records. He was indeed a medical officer serving in Kerry's unit. He was there when Kerry was there, was deployed to the same areas Kerry was deployed to. His signature is not on Kerry's citation because he refused to sign it saying that the wound did not merit it. Which is exactly what he testified to in his affidavit and which is what the Vets said in their commercial.
You have someone claiming the opposite of what he claimed after the war.
What? That didn't even make sense.
Snopes did a fine job summarizing the lies
Are you completely deranged? The Snopes hatchet-job has been thoroughly discredited, was thoroughly discredited weeks ago. This is old news!
Also, that was quite subtle how you shifted from claiming there's no link between the swift boats and bush to claiming that the swift boat ads are true. Where do you stand exactly?
Funny, I thought those were two different questions. One: there is no improper relationship between SBVFT and the Bush campaign, the GOP or the White House. Two: the claims that the Vets have made -- under oath, mind you -- have never been demonstrated to be anything other than God's own truth.
No; he did not specifically denounce the SBVFT ads for being false
How the hell would he know? The President wasn't there. He has no more reason to say that the ads were false than
In other words, he evaded the real issue.
"He evaded the real issue" = "he didn't take my side." Okay, dude. Whatever.
I cited, with links to evidence, three separate connections apart from Ginsburg, which you never refuted or even addressed.
Those are not "connections!" I mean, if you want to play "six degrees of separation," I'm sure we can have ourselves a fine time. John Smith knows Jane Doe who knows Albert Johnson who knows Robert Thompson. But that proves nothing, other than it's a small world.
There is no "connection," in the sense that there was no influence of one group upon the other, and no cooperation between them. None whatsoever.
That would be 1972.
Um. You've got to be kidding me, right? That article is a tissue of errors and misstatements, and it also dates back to February, for Chrissakes. I can't swear to it, but I think I myself wrote one of the hundreds of point-by-point refutations.
Long story short: the president did not "drop out" of anything. His aircraft was being phased out and the Guard declined to train him on a new one. He let his flight status lapse because he knew he wouldn't be flying any more and because a physical examination is not a fun thing to do with your day. He requested a leave to work on the senatorial campaign and was granted that leave. During 1972 he accumulated more than the required 50 points; I think the precise number was 54.
You're so completely out of touch with the facts, and yet you think you've got a monopoly on truth. That's really sad, ya know?
Watch the Republican Convention again; I'm sure you videotaped the whole thing.
Actually I was busy covering it, so I didn't catch much of the TV broadcasts.
That's practically all these people could talk about, what a strong leader Bush will be compared to that french-looking wimp Kerry.
Hmm. We're off-topic again. You said the campaign cast aspersions on Kerry's war record. That did not happen during the convention, or at any other time.
Now, the campaign has cast a shitload of aspersions on Kerry's Senate record, and rightly so. But that's
I write in my journal
So it is clear that the 'th' glyph was present on at least some of the manual typewriters on the base.
Sigh. There's never been a manual typewriter that did proportional letterspacing.
You're just in complete flail mode now, aren't you?
Your statement from 'IBM' is unsourced
Wakey wakey, Zein. I told you that I got that info from IBM's press relations office. Hellooo?
why would someone working for the IBM computer company in 2004 have any expertise in what options the IBM typewriter division was delivering in Texas in the 1960s?
Because they have the catalog of what IBM manufactured.
The IBM executive had been made for over thirty years by the time the memo was written and the model used could have been any one of them.
Right. But none of them had a "th" glyph on it.
Again, if the memos were fake then the WH would not have re-released the CBS documents
The White House didn't re-release anything. They merely passed the memos along to other reporters, as has been White House policy for years. Any time a reporter hands the press secretary a piece of documentation, the White House faxes or emails copies out to everybody in the pool. That's how they do things.
Bush would have said 'I was never ordered to take the medical'
Zein, you're a mouth-breathing pederast. You haven't denied it, therefore it must be true!
Seriously, your grip on reality is tenuous at best.
I write in my journal
Twirlip of the Mists has strongly implied the documents are forgeries
I'm not implying it. After three days of research, I'm saying it outright. These memos are forgeries, and inept ones at that.
despite the CBS experts
Actually CBS has only produced one expert, and all he talked about was the signature, and all he said was that it wasn't obviously forged.
Which is, of course, irrelevant. Given two minutes and a copy of Photoshop, anybody can put any signature on any document.
despite the contradictory statements here and elsewhere
"Nuh uh" is not a contradictory statement.
despite living persons saying the alleged author of these documents had said these concerns to others
MG Hodges didn't say that. CBS said he said that, but upon hearing his words misrepresented, he recanted. He was read the memos over the phone (he never saw them) and said, "If that's what Jerry Killian wrote, that must be what he felt."
of course I'm not even going to listen to anyone else
You weren't listening to anyone before, you shithead. What's the difference.
I write in my journal
And how exactly is the UN relevent? A group that allows Syria & North Korea to head the human rights council? Please.
Bush never said Iraq had nukes. Not once.
What abortion? What cocaine use? Are you talking about the Kitty Kelley lies? Its funny how you liberals will believe anything bad you hear about Bush, despite there being ZERO evidence. Hey, I'll start one - GW Bush kicked me in the shin once when I was a kid. Yep; he was running for Texas legislature, and I was in Midland, and he just kicked me in the shin. The bastard. Now, go tell Kitty.... What's funny is that only one person is credited for the info on Bush's cocaine use at Camp David, and she flat out calls Kelley a liar, saying she never said that. But, you'll go on believing it, because mindlessness is what Lib's do.
Iraq *did* have connections with al Qaeda, this has been proven.
Again, by looking at these, they are either true, or based on lies told by Democrats. Big lie, indeed....
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!