It's mine and I replied to the wrong post without reading properly and really really should have just left it alone. I like books-a-million, good prices and good site.
The very one. My brain recognized it a fraction of a second before my finger clicked SUBMIT, but the muscle command was already traveling down the nerves, too late!
It belongs to George Bush, who is proclaiming he is a real rowser. There's no W because they never did find that key when moving in after the Clintons left.
Yes, there certainly have been fewer casualties, but I don't know the Vietnam war stats well, perhaps the first year or so wasn't quite so much worse, since we didn't get into the really heavy buildup for a year or two.
But it's the fraudulent way it started, by idiots who don't take war seriously, who think of it as a game, who don't want the military to do anything dangerous, who make claims as bizarre as Comical Ali aout progress and how we are winning. All that is the parallels. There was absolutely no point in the Vietnam war where it would not have been better to abandon the whole effort. Zero was gained, other than learning how to make better weapons. My worst worry is that this will be the same. I find it hard to believe that we can actually tame the country, since what offended Al Qaeda so much was the presence of Christian soldiers in Muslim countries, and we have given them the best recruiting poster they could have ever dreamed of. I fear that we will spend years and years trying to find some way to exit with honor, just as Nixon did, and never succeed, and eventually leave with our tails between our legs again. I would rather we just got out now, just leave. I don't see anything to be gained by sticking around, recruiting more Al Qaeda soldiers, and destroying ever more of Iraq in order to save it.
I'm not so sure that that is true. Do you have any survey evidence to point to which would support your statement?
I mean that it took years for the general public to get aroused by the Vietnam stupidity. For the first few years, only hippies and a few radical politicians said we didn't belong there. Look at the 1972 election, McGovern vs Nixon. Nixon was as big a slimeball in his crooked way as Shrub is now, if not more so, yet he actually won a re-election landslide. If Shrub wins, it won't be any landslide. That to me is the best survey possible. Of course, Kerry isn't as radical as McGovern, but I still think it holds water. It took 8 years to get to that point then, and only one year now.
The parallels with Vietnam are very striking. A congressional resolution authorizing the president to take action, based on fraudulent reported threats, twisted all out of proportion for different purposes. Ridiculous rules of engagement by politicians who have no clue what war really is, hamstringing the warriors, because a real war, which might have a chance of "winning", would destroy the country in order to save it. Bogus statistics showing progress in "winning". Description of the enemy as anything evil other than the reality of a mostly native populace trying to throw out foreigners.
But one big difference. It took 8 years, from 1964 to 1972, to get the populace riled up enough to become so disgusted with the rulers' lies to shake things up. It has taken only one year this time. Just as personal video cams taping the Rodney King beating have made it a lot harder for police to get away with random vigilante justice, so have the internet and digital cameras and satellite phones made it a lot harder for world leaders to fool all of the people.
Sure it will happen again, but the response time to detect bullshit will be even shorter next time.
The gerrymandering of political districts has gotten way out of control. There are districts split into several pieces, districts which follow interstates between major cities, all by democrats and republicans agreeing to carve out safe districts for themselves, as if they have given up trying to improve their percentage of legislatures and congress. (Wouldn't it be a sweet dream to get the anti-monopoly trust busters after the two major parties? Oh such a sweet dream!)
Political battles are now not a single battle for the center with compromise being the order of the day, but two independent battles, left and right, with the minority is pretty much guaranteed to be a waste of time. Out of 435 seats in the house, only someting like 20 are an actual horse race with the winner in doubt.
What you get is polarized politics. Instead of having to actually woo ALL the voters, they have to woo their side of the political spectrum. The winner is guaranteed to be from one extreme or the other, not the center. And since the majority of voters in each district have become accustomed to their guy winning, it is natural to extrapolate to the entire country, and think of themselves as being the majority in the entire country, thus their opponents are simply immoral and selfish. No one has to compromise any more, or think about the entire country, because they believe they are thinking of the entire country, and their opponents are minority radicals. We have become a nation of cliques.
Whether or not centrist candidates actually accomplish much is a different question, and whether third party candidates would do better is yet another question, but having safe guaranteed seats and a stagnant congress surely does no good to anybody except the entrenched powers.
I'm not going to go hunt for that analysis. I saw it in the last week or two. I don't remember the web site, but it wasn't some fringe source, it was something about as respectable as the New York Times, I just don't remember who. The point is, the only one who could say for sure the document is real is the colonel, and he is dead. If it is a forgery, no one has taken responsibility for it. All those who say the documents are definitely forgeries are talking out their hat. There is no proof either way, and besides, they just agree with the general knowledge that Bush pulled some fast moves and walked away from his obligation, whether with tacit approval because he wasn't worth prosecuting or not.
As for Bush lying, he was told several times by the very CIA who was boosting the case for war that the Nigerian yellowcake document was an utter forgery. He kept on putting it in speeches, they'd vet the speech and tell him to take it out, and the next speech, it would go right back in.
I remember reading about that document six months before his state of the union speech. It was so bad... one of the alleged signers had been out of office for something like ten years by the time he supposedly signed it.
He also had started making plans to invade Iraq as soon as he got into office, well before 9-11.
He was told by many experts that the aluminum tubes were not useful for centrifuges and were almost certainly intended for rockets, just like previous batches of the same tubes had been used for rockets.
In short, he was fishing for any excuse to finish daddy's war. He certainly knew he was grasping at straws, and lying like a wino who begs for coffee money.
No! He walked away from it. He does not say he got an early out, which you'd think he would if he had. Instead, he just says he was honorably discharged. He walked away from his service obligation without proper authorization, they washed their hands of him because it wasn't worth the effort to prosecute, and he refuses to admit there was anything even slightly smelly about the whole affair. He does not take responsibility for his own actions, and that is my gripe. Clinton admitted he dodged the draft, legally. Kerry admits he used his third purple heart to get an early out from swift boats. Why can't Bush admit he dodged the draft and then bagged out early? That's my gripe, especially since he and his neocons have been so ready to stomp on Clinton for telling the truth about how he dodged the draft.
Kerry took advantage of a regulation that those with three purple hearts could request transfer out of the area.
I myself got a three month early out for staying on my ship instead of transferring after two years.
My gripe with Bush is that he claims he served his full obligation, says he served in Alabama, etc, when he did not. If he had taken advantage of some early out program, why doesn't he say so? He refuses to take any responsibility for leaving early without permission, and that is my gripe, especially with all the righteous right who blasted Clinton for legally dodging the draft. Then there are Cheney (5 school deferments; he "had better things to do"), and all the other legal draft dodgers in the administration. Bush man talk with forked tongue, and I despise that. If they said they regret their earlier decisions, or they don't remember the details, I wouldn't care, but they are all holier than thou and sending soldiers to die for a stupid pointless resumption of daddy's war when they are hyprocrits about the niceties of draft dodging.
Funny isn't it, how almost all the swift boat vets who now condemn Kerry were singing his praises in speech and writing previously, some only last year. Furthermore, those who now condemn him either weren't in service with him, weren't in his battles, or just plain weren't even in theater. One of them, who condemns his silver or bronze star, got the same medal for the same action with the same message, and no that message was not written by Kerry. And it was approved and forwarded on by some admiral who wasn't even on scene and now calls it a lie.
Anyone who puts credence in the swift boat vets is just plain blind.
But the Bushies made such a horrendous deal out of Clinton having (legally) dodged the draft, for them to hold up Bush's Guard (non)service as Good is beyond hypocritical. Like I said, if I were basing my choice only on character showed by military service, Kerry would win in a heartbeat.
Let's see, photocopies that distort only certain letters (etaoi...) which happen to be the most common ones, and the ones that wear out on typewriters. That's pretty fancy technology. But I suppose you could tart up the fonts that Word uses.
It also distorts by jumping some characters up, like a typewriter. That's even better, now you'd have to muck around with Word very much weirdly.
They don't look typewritten when you only see them thru Rush's eyes. Try looking at them with your own eyes. Figure out how photocopying them can distort them enough to look like a typewriter, then claim it still matches Word perfectly. I guess all photocopiers distort equally all over the country.
And if Bush didn't jump the queue because he didn't need to, then what does the then-Lt Governor mean when he says he got Bush the appointment? I suppose just backup? Maybe Bush didn't meet the grades? Or maybe there really was a queue, as so many other people say, including lots of people who couldn't get in because the eaiting period was so long.
But at least you admit he left early. Even Bush won't admit that, he just says he fulfilled his obligation but refuses to admit he didn't do the 5 years he promised.
For your information, getting an honorable discharge in those times was pretty easy if you wanted out. The military was winding down after the Vietnam war, wanted to get rid of all the losers who had only volunteered so they could avoid the draft, and those who had not been happy draftees, so if you wanted out, it wasn't hard. I had a shipmate who could flutter one eyeball and get it bloodshot within a few seconds. One day he decided he had had enough of the navy and began going down to sick call after fluttering his eyeball, and after a few visits he got an honorable discharge for medical reasons.
Another friend got an honorable discharge after fragging several officers. They didn't have enough evidence to charge him, but they didn't want him in either.
Our ship pulled into Karachi, Pakistan, and gave clear warning that everybody returning from shore would be strip searched. 40 people got caught bringing a kilo of hash on board, and rumor spread real quick that they had been discharged, honorably, just to get rid of them, rather than the hassle of a court martial. A whole lot of sailors kicked themselves for not joining in on the fun.
The problem isn't that Bush got out early, it's that he lies about it. He didn't use proper channels, he didn't have any excuse except he didn't want to take a drug test and he had to help on a political campaign and he simply quit going to guard meetings on his own initiative. Now he won't admit it. H\he is a lying whining coward who has no concept of responsibility. The buck certainly does not stop at his desk.
You say the documents don't count because they are forged, and they are forged because they contradict your position.
That praise of Bush is bog-standard fitness reporting. Ever heard of grade inflation? The military has it in spades. Just about everyone gets an A. You have to be really atrocious to get a bad report. Besides, no one says Bush wasn't ok to start with.
If you want to pick and choose documents, go ahead. There are a whole lot of documents, even some released by the white house, showing that he did not meet his obligation. Of course the Bushies like yourself say those documents don't count, since they don't support Bush. They say the honorable discharge proves all the others are lies. This all assumes there are no favors done in the military, which is given the lie by the very fact that Bush jumped the queue to get into the guard and never finished his flight obligation. 5 years. That covered not just Alabama, it also covered a year or two of Yale. It was not 5 years if you feel like it, or 5 years of getting dental exams. It was 5 years of flight duty. He skipped the last two. He signed an agreement for 5 years of flight duty, he walked away from the last two.
No matter how many documents you say are forged, the bare fact is that he signed for 5 years of flight duty and skipped the last two. No quibbling about crumpled photocopies or republicans kids' memories can change that.
But I guess that simple fact embarasses you, because you keep avoiding it and concentrating on crumpled Word documents that somehow get misaligned enough to look like they are typewritten yet still perfectly match Word documents, even tho the purported photocopying was surely on different copiers.
If I had to choose between Kerry and Bush, based solely on their military service or what their military service showed of their character, it would be Kerry in a heartbeat, for the reasons stated above.
But here's how I really feel about politicians and voting and elections.
Firts, politicians are scum, but that's because we only choose scum. Look at all the flak Kerry has gotten for actually thinking about bills and voting differently as conditions change, and for giving detailed answers. What politician wants that kind of noise? Better to give soundbytes and follow some standard party line and pass on the standard lies. Politicians follow the law of evolution too, survival of the fittest, and the result is that you can't rely on what they say. besides which, even if they talk reasonably, like Kerry's long winded answers, you still can't rely on those answers, because conditions may change, and then their previous answers are useless.
So people do the natural thing, which is disregard everything substantial said by politicians. All you have left is character: how do they behave under pressure, do they act like fools, do they seem like they use their common sense, do they seem to understand and think and generally be someone you can rely on? And the only way to get that answer is to watch them in public. That's where sitting politicians have the advantage, people see them all the time on TV, read about them every day in the newspapers. Very few challengers get that same kind of publicity. That's why Arnie became governor of California, how Reagan became president.
My voting preference thus is biased against incumbents. Throw the rascals out! They get so much publicity that few challengers can match, and I figure they are lining their pockets, either financially or contact-wise or thru some inner ego kind of budget, that one term is enough. Throw the rascals out and get in fresh inexperienced rascals who haven't built up the contacts and corruption machinery.
You could call Kerry an incumbent, since he has been in the senate for what, 20 years? But it is a different office, so the edge goes towards him.
Secondly, look at the American federal givernment over the last 30 years, and the only time it came close to working the way a government should work was 1994 and a year or two afterwards, when the voters got so fed up with Clinton corruption that they voted in a republican congress. Sudenly the two sides actually had to talk to each other, we had a budget surplus, and things actually got done.
Didn't take long for the noble incoming republicans to break all their promises, of course. Power corrupts. Pretty soon it was back to the same old same old, petty bickering, stalemate, you name it, nothing new, move along.
So my second bias is to make sure the congress and president are from opposite parties. I don't want crap like the PATRIOT trash rammed thru, or the bogus resolution which Shrub used to resume daddy's war. I want it to be damned hard for the government to act quickly, I want them to compromise and talk to each other and debate things.
Shrub loses there too. It's a lot less likely that either the senate or house will become democrat, so I want a democrat president.
And in fact, I live in California, which almost certainly will go for Kerry. So if he has a big enough lead here, I will not waste my vote adding to that tally, I will look at the smaller parties, and see where my vote can do the most good. If they get a certain percentage of votes, they get on the ballot next time without having to collect signatures.
Now, does any of that answer any of your questions?
Being crumpled up and run through a copier for a few generations will introduce some variation in the horizontal and vertical spacing (mostly to do with the position of the scanning element.)
and
Whereas if you load up a modern version of MS Word, keep the default settings, and type up and print out the text of the memo, you get a perfect match.
So you can make it mismatch and match at the same time? Crumple it up to make it misaligned and look like a typewritten document, but it still matches Word exactly? Pretty clever!
As for not being required to finish his flight obligation, he signed documents to get into the Guard that he would spend 5 years flying, and only did three. He was ordered to take the physical, and as far as being invasive, sheesh, a standard flight physical which would have incidentally shown up his cocaine usage. He'd taken them before, and he sure as hell supports the war on drugs. I guess he just can't take the heat. He was also told that the Alabama outfit was not acceptable, went ahead on his own and flaked out from both bases anyway. That's responsibility for you!
As for who says the office attitude supported the Colonel, it's interesting that you disavow the secretary's word merely because she is a democrat. I'd guess the secretary knew more about what went on in the office than his wife or children. If he was typing up memos himself to cover his ass for Bush's outside interference, do you think it likely he'd blab to his wife? How old were his children then? I suppose they are republicans, that makes all the difference in the world.
And your last comment, what a joke. Yes, a banker embezzles, keep him in his job to deal with it, that's what you're suggesting. Pretty good. I reckon the rest of your comments are about as intelligent. Let me have your bank account while your at it, I could have some fun with that.
I'd vote for the guy who got three purple hearts, a silver star, and a bronze star, anytime, over the guy who took the rich boy coward's way out and won't admit there was anything even remotely improper about it.
Attacking any of Kerry's purple hearts is attacking every purple heart ever issued. That is not to say that all were well earned. No doubt some were for mere scratches, just as LBJ got a silver star in WWII basically to get him out of the war zone; MacArthur didn't appreciate politicians gallivanting around to get votes back home. But to single out one of Kerry's three purple hearts, when he was at least over there and getting shot at and rescuing a man, is pretty damned silly.
A friend of mine was so pissed about the slimeball attacks on Kerry's purple hearts by the Bushies that when he saw a jeep with a purple heart license plate and a "Another vet for Bush" bumper sticker, he asked the guy if he had earned his purple heart. That's obnoxious as hell, but perfectly fair in the light of the Bushies attacking Kerry's purple hearts. Either check them all or leave them all alone. Don't single out Kerry.
SCO at least went after somebody with lots of money, even if they did have a bogus case. Not much point going after a (small?) startup, it would probably cost more in lawyers than any money to be gained. My guess is just a bunch of scam artists hoping for a quick buck.
There have been plenty of analyses. The common letters (etaoinshrdlu...) are worn like they would be on a typewriter, and all the letters show slight variations in vertical and horizontal position and impression, just as they would be on a real mechanical typewriter. No one who had the patience for that kind of fakery would slip up on the obvious ones like letterhead.
Furthermore, interviews with the colonel's secretary says the tone of the letter and the information in it was exactly what was being talked about in the office at the time, that everyone knew how pissed the colonel was about Bush playing fast and loose with his obligation, and the pressure from above and outside to let Bush get away with it.
Bush signed up for 5 yars flight obligation and walked away from the last two years.
As for the rest of your comments, Bush is a lying whining coward. Sitting for 7 minutes reading a book like a deer in headlights while the country is udner attack --- what kind of bravery is that? Lying about the reasons for going to war is a lot more important than Clinton lying about who he had sex with. Whining about Kerry flipflopping when Bush has flipflopped over nation building, fiscal prudence, states rights, government bureaucracy -- he isn't even a republican!
He can't even take responsibility for anything. He hasn't even got the guts to say I was wrong, I made a mistake. He just barges on as though nothing has happened. That takes real moral courage. The buck sure doesn't stop anywhere near the White House these days.
Anyone who likes Bush is blind. Anyone who thinks he knows what he is doing has blinders on in addition.
The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong broke themsleves in the Feb 1968 Tet offensive but they kept on going. And maybe if we had not had those idiotic rules of engagement, we could have "won", if winning means utterly destroying the enemy, just as maybe we could "win" in Iraq if we had no rules of engagement, like leaving mosques alone even when used as firebases. But there's that famous quote -- we had to destroy the village in order to save it -- and what's the point? What would there be left worth having fought for?
It's their country. They are willing to die to give us the finger. We aren't prepared to destroy their country in order to "save" them.
The problem is the same as in Vietnam. War is serious business, it is not a game, and when you make up rules of engagement that tie both hands behind your back, then you aren't serious enough about it and should stay out. If you aren't prepared to destroy the enemy, then you should not go to war. If you have to wave around fact sheets full of moonshine statistics and rosy projections and speculate that another year, or two, or ever-so-many would win, then you aren't serious about it, and you should not be there at all.
This war was fought because Shrub wanted to finish Daddy's war. We ought to send Shrub and all those armchair neocon experts over there to finish what they started.
How common is it for the political party of another country to write the ruler's speech? That's what is really stinko here. They weren't Allawi's speechwriters, they were Bush's. Gaaaak. The man has no pride whatsover, either of them.
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what do *we* think the goals and schedule should look like?
You got a $200,000 frog in your pocket? Otherwise it jest don't matter a whole hill of beans what *you* think the goals should be.
It's mine and I replied to the wrong post without reading properly and really really should have just left it alone. I like books-a-million, good prices and good site.
$25.19 including free shipping for orders over $25. Trick is to pay $10 to be a member and get the extra discount.
The very one. My brain recognized it a fraction of a second before my finger clicked SUBMIT, but the muscle command was already traveling down the nerves, too late!
It belongs to George Bush, who is proclaiming he is a real rowser. There's no W because they never did find that key when moving in after the Clintons left.
Yes, there certainly have been fewer casualties, but I don't know the Vietnam war stats well, perhaps the first year or so wasn't quite so much worse, since we didn't get into the really heavy buildup for a year or two.
But it's the fraudulent way it started, by idiots who don't take war seriously, who think of it as a game, who don't want the military to do anything dangerous, who make claims as bizarre as Comical Ali aout progress and how we are winning. All that is the parallels. There was absolutely no point in the Vietnam war where it would not have been better to abandon the whole effort. Zero was gained, other than learning how to make better weapons. My worst worry is that this will be the same. I find it hard to believe that we can actually tame the country, since what offended Al Qaeda so much was the presence of Christian soldiers in Muslim countries, and we have given them the best recruiting poster they could have ever dreamed of. I fear that we will spend years and years trying to find some way to exit with honor, just as Nixon did, and never succeed, and eventually leave with our tails between our legs again. I would rather we just got out now, just leave. I don't see anything to be gained by sticking around, recruiting more Al Qaeda soldiers, and destroying ever more of Iraq in order to save it.
I'm not so sure that that is true. Do you have any survey evidence to point to which would support your statement?
I mean that it took years for the general public to get aroused by the Vietnam stupidity. For the first few years, only hippies and a few radical politicians said we didn't belong there. Look at the 1972 election, McGovern vs Nixon. Nixon was as big a slimeball in his crooked way as Shrub is now, if not more so, yet he actually won a re-election landslide. If Shrub wins, it won't be any landslide. That to me is the best survey possible. Of course, Kerry isn't as radical as McGovern, but I still think it holds water. It took 8 years to get to that point then, and only one year now.
He said
sky reported to be mostly blue and sun is expected to rise tommorow morning
You parsed it as
sky reported to be mostly blue and (sun is expected to rise tommorow morning)
An alternative parsing is
(sky reported to be mostly blue and sun is expected to rise) tommorow morning
The parallels with Vietnam are very striking. A congressional resolution authorizing the president to take action, based on fraudulent reported threats, twisted all out of proportion for different purposes. Ridiculous rules of engagement by politicians who have no clue what war really is, hamstringing the warriors, because a real war, which might have a chance of "winning", would destroy the country in order to save it. Bogus statistics showing progress in "winning". Description of the enemy as anything evil other than the reality of a mostly native populace trying to throw out foreigners.
But one big difference. It took 8 years, from 1964 to 1972, to get the populace riled up enough to become so disgusted with the rulers' lies to shake things up. It has taken only one year this time. Just as personal video cams taping the Rodney King beating have made it a lot harder for police to get away with random vigilante justice, so have the internet and digital cameras and satellite phones made it a lot harder for world leaders to fool all of the people.
Sure it will happen again, but the response time to detect bullshit will be even shorter next time.
Notice the reference to oil... Not to the safety of the United States' populace. Oil. Cute.
It has not escaped my attention that the war is called Operation Iraqi Freedom, not Operation Iraqi Liberation.
The gerrymandering of political districts has gotten way out of control. There are districts split into several pieces, districts which follow interstates between major cities, all by democrats and republicans agreeing to carve out safe districts for themselves, as if they have given up trying to improve their percentage of legislatures and congress. (Wouldn't it be a sweet dream to get the anti-monopoly trust busters after the two major parties? Oh such a sweet dream!)
Political battles are now not a single battle for the center with compromise being the order of the day, but two independent battles, left and right, with the minority is pretty much guaranteed to be a waste of time. Out of 435 seats in the house, only someting like 20 are an actual horse race with the winner in doubt.
What you get is polarized politics. Instead of having to actually woo ALL the voters, they have to woo their side of the political spectrum. The winner is guaranteed to be from one extreme or the other, not the center. And since the majority of voters in each district have become accustomed to their guy winning, it is natural to extrapolate to the entire country, and think of themselves as being the majority in the entire country, thus their opponents are simply immoral and selfish. No one has to compromise any more, or think about the entire country, because they believe they are thinking of the entire country, and their opponents are minority radicals. We have become a nation of cliques.
Whether or not centrist candidates actually accomplish much is a different question, and whether third party candidates would do better is yet another question, but having safe guaranteed seats and a stagnant congress surely does no good to anybody except the entrenched powers.
I'm not going to go hunt for that analysis. I saw it in the last week or two. I don't remember the web site, but it wasn't some fringe source, it was something about as respectable as the New York Times, I just don't remember who. The point is, the only one who could say for sure the document is real is the colonel, and he is dead. If it is a forgery, no one has taken responsibility for it. All those who say the documents are definitely forgeries are talking out their hat. There is no proof either way, and besides, they just agree with the general knowledge that Bush pulled some fast moves and walked away from his obligation, whether with tacit approval because he wasn't worth prosecuting or not.
... one of the alleged signers had been out of office for something like ten years by the time he supposedly signed it.
As for Bush lying, he was told several times by the very CIA who was boosting the case for war that the Nigerian yellowcake document was an utter forgery. He kept on putting it in speeches, they'd vet the speech and tell him to take it out, and the next speech, it would go right back in.
I remember reading about that document six months before his state of the union speech. It was so bad
He also had started making plans to invade Iraq as soon as he got into office, well before 9-11.
He was told by many experts that the aluminum tubes were not useful for centrifuges and were almost certainly intended for rockets, just like previous batches of the same tubes had been used for rockets.
In short, he was fishing for any excuse to finish daddy's war. He certainly knew he was grasping at straws, and lying like a wino who begs for coffee money.
No! He walked away from it. He does not say he got an early out, which you'd think he would if he had. Instead, he just says he was honorably discharged. He walked away from his service obligation without proper authorization, they washed their hands of him because it wasn't worth the effort to prosecute, and he refuses to admit there was anything even slightly smelly about the whole affair. He does not take responsibility for his own actions, and that is my gripe. Clinton admitted he dodged the draft, legally. Kerry admits he used his third purple heart to get an early out from swift boats. Why can't Bush admit he dodged the draft and then bagged out early? That's my gripe, especially since he and his neocons have been so ready to stomp on Clinton for telling the truth about how he dodged the draft.
They are the skunks who want it both ways.
Kerry took advantage of a regulation that those with three purple hearts could request transfer out of the area.
I myself got a three month early out for staying on my ship instead of transferring after two years.
My gripe with Bush is that he claims he served his full obligation, says he served in Alabama, etc, when he did not. If he had taken advantage of some early out program, why doesn't he say so? He refuses to take any responsibility for leaving early without permission, and that is my gripe, especially with all the righteous right who blasted Clinton for legally dodging the draft. Then there are Cheney (5 school deferments; he "had better things to do"), and all the other legal draft dodgers in the administration. Bush man talk with forked tongue, and I despise that. If they said they regret their earlier decisions, or they don't remember the details, I wouldn't care, but they are all holier than thou and sending soldiers to die for a stupid pointless resumption of daddy's war when they are hyprocrits about the niceties of draft dodging.
Funny isn't it, how almost all the swift boat vets who now condemn Kerry were singing his praises in speech and writing previously, some only last year. Furthermore, those who now condemn him either weren't in service with him, weren't in his battles, or just plain weren't even in theater. One of them, who condemns his silver or bronze star, got the same medal for the same action with the same message, and no that message was not written by Kerry. And it was approved and forwarded on by some admiral who wasn't even on scene and now calls it a lie.
Anyone who puts credence in the swift boat vets is just plain blind.
But the Bushies made such a horrendous deal out of Clinton having (legally) dodged the draft, for them to hold up Bush's Guard (non)service as Good is beyond hypocritical. Like I said, if I were basing my choice only on character showed by military service, Kerry would win in a heartbeat.
Let's see, photocopies that distort only certain letters (etaoi...) which happen to be the most common ones, and the ones that wear out on typewriters. That's pretty fancy technology. But I suppose you could tart up the fonts that Word uses.
It also distorts by jumping some characters up, like a typewriter. That's even better, now you'd have to muck around with Word very much weirdly.
They don't look typewritten when you only see them thru Rush's eyes. Try looking at them with your own eyes. Figure out how photocopying them can distort them enough to look like a typewriter, then claim it still matches Word perfectly. I guess all photocopiers distort equally all over the country.
And if Bush didn't jump the queue because he didn't need to, then what does the then-Lt Governor mean when he says he got Bush the appointment? I suppose just backup? Maybe Bush didn't meet the grades? Or maybe there really was a queue, as so many other people say, including lots of people who couldn't get in because the eaiting period was so long.
But at least you admit he left early. Even Bush won't admit that, he just says he fulfilled his obligation but refuses to admit he didn't do the 5 years he promised.
For your information, getting an honorable discharge in those times was pretty easy if you wanted out. The military was winding down after the Vietnam war, wanted to get rid of all the losers who had only volunteered so they could avoid the draft, and those who had not been happy draftees, so if you wanted out, it wasn't hard. I had a shipmate who could flutter one eyeball and get it bloodshot within a few seconds. One day he decided he had had enough of the navy and began going down to sick call after fluttering his eyeball, and after a few visits he got an honorable discharge for medical reasons.
Another friend got an honorable discharge after fragging several officers. They didn't have enough evidence to charge him, but they didn't want him in either.
Our ship pulled into Karachi, Pakistan, and gave clear warning that everybody returning from shore would be strip searched. 40 people got caught bringing a kilo of hash on board, and rumor spread real quick that they had been discharged, honorably, just to get rid of them, rather than the hassle of a court martial. A whole lot of sailors kicked themselves for not joining in on the fun.
The problem isn't that Bush got out early, it's that he lies about it. He didn't use proper channels, he didn't have any excuse except he didn't want to take a drug test and he had to help on a political campaign and he simply quit going to guard meetings on his own initiative. Now he won't admit it. H\he is a lying whining coward who has no concept of responsibility. The buck certainly does not stop at his desk.
You say the documents don't count because they are forged, and they are forged because they contradict your position.
That praise of Bush is bog-standard fitness reporting. Ever heard of grade inflation? The military has it in spades. Just about everyone gets an A. You have to be really atrocious to get a bad report. Besides, no one says Bush wasn't ok to start with.
If you want to pick and choose documents, go ahead. There are a whole lot of documents, even some released by the white house, showing that he did not meet his obligation. Of course the Bushies like yourself say those documents don't count, since they don't support Bush. They say the honorable discharge proves all the others are lies. This all assumes there are no favors done in the military, which is given the lie by the very fact that Bush jumped the queue to get into the guard and never finished his flight obligation. 5 years. That covered not just Alabama, it also covered a year or two of Yale. It was not 5 years if you feel like it, or 5 years of getting dental exams. It was 5 years of flight duty. He skipped the last two. He signed an agreement for 5 years of flight duty, he walked away from the last two.
No matter how many documents you say are forged, the bare fact is that he signed for 5 years of flight duty and skipped the last two. No quibbling about crumpled photocopies or republicans kids' memories can change that.
But I guess that simple fact embarasses you, because you keep avoiding it and concentrating on crumpled Word documents that somehow get misaligned enough to look like they are typewritten yet still perfectly match Word documents, even tho the purported photocopying was surely on different copiers.
If I had to choose between Kerry and Bush, based solely on their military service or what their military service showed of their character, it would be Kerry in a heartbeat, for the reasons stated above.
But here's how I really feel about politicians and voting and elections.
Firts, politicians are scum, but that's because we only choose scum. Look at all the flak Kerry has gotten for actually thinking about bills and voting differently as conditions change, and for giving detailed answers. What politician wants that kind of noise? Better to give soundbytes and follow some standard party line and pass on the standard lies. Politicians follow the law of evolution too, survival of the fittest, and the result is that you can't rely on what they say. besides which, even if they talk reasonably, like Kerry's long winded answers, you still can't rely on those answers, because conditions may change, and then their previous answers are useless.
So people do the natural thing, which is disregard everything substantial said by politicians. All you have left is character: how do they behave under pressure, do they act like fools, do they seem like they use their common sense, do they seem to understand and think and generally be someone you can rely on? And the only way to get that answer is to watch them in public. That's where sitting politicians have the advantage, people see them all the time on TV, read about them every day in the newspapers. Very few challengers get that same kind of publicity. That's why Arnie became governor of California, how Reagan became president.
My voting preference thus is biased against incumbents. Throw the rascals out! They get so much publicity that few challengers can match, and I figure they are lining their pockets, either financially or contact-wise or thru some inner ego kind of budget, that one term is enough. Throw the rascals out and get in fresh inexperienced rascals who haven't built up the contacts and corruption machinery.
You could call Kerry an incumbent, since he has been in the senate for what, 20 years? But it is a different office, so the edge goes towards him.
Secondly, look at the American federal givernment over the last 30 years, and the only time it came close to working the way a government should work was 1994 and a year or two afterwards, when the voters got so fed up with Clinton corruption that they voted in a republican congress. Sudenly the two sides actually had to talk to each other, we had a budget surplus, and things actually got done.
Didn't take long for the noble incoming republicans to break all their promises, of course. Power corrupts. Pretty soon it was back to the same old same old, petty bickering, stalemate, you name it, nothing new, move along.
So my second bias is to make sure the congress and president are from opposite parties. I don't want crap like the PATRIOT trash rammed thru, or the bogus resolution which Shrub used to resume daddy's war. I want it to be damned hard for the government to act quickly, I want them to compromise and talk to each other and debate things.
Shrub loses there too. It's a lot less likely that either the senate or house will become democrat, so I want a democrat president.
And in fact, I live in California, which almost certainly will go for Kerry. So if he has a big enough lead here, I will not waste my vote adding to that tally, I will look at the smaller parties, and see where my vote can do the most good. If they get a certain percentage of votes, they get on the ballot next time without having to collect signatures.
Now, does any of that answer any of your questions?
Let's see here ...
Being crumpled up and run through a copier for a few generations will introduce some variation in the horizontal and vertical spacing (mostly to do with the position of the scanning element.)
and
Whereas if you load up a modern version of MS Word, keep the default settings, and type up and print out the text of the memo, you get a perfect match.
So you can make it mismatch and match at the same time? Crumple it up to make it misaligned and look like a typewritten document, but it still matches Word exactly? Pretty clever!
As for not being required to finish his flight obligation, he signed documents to get into the Guard that he would spend 5 years flying, and only did three. He was ordered to take the physical, and as far as being invasive, sheesh, a standard flight physical which would have incidentally shown up his cocaine usage. He'd taken them before, and he sure as hell supports the war on drugs. I guess he just can't take the heat. He was also told that the Alabama outfit was not acceptable, went ahead on his own and flaked out from both bases anyway. That's responsibility for you!
As for who says the office attitude supported the Colonel, it's interesting that you disavow the secretary's word merely because she is a democrat. I'd guess the secretary knew more about what went on in the office than his wife or children. If he was typing up memos himself to cover his ass for Bush's outside interference, do you think it likely he'd blab to his wife? How old were his children then? I suppose they are republicans, that makes all the difference in the world.
And your last comment, what a joke. Yes, a banker embezzles, keep him in his job to deal with it, that's what you're suggesting. Pretty good. I reckon the rest of your comments are about as intelligent. Let me have your bank account while your at it, I could have some fun with that.
I'd vote for the guy who got three purple hearts, a silver star, and a bronze star, anytime, over the guy who took the rich boy coward's way out and won't admit there was anything even remotely improper about it.
Attacking any of Kerry's purple hearts is attacking every purple heart ever issued. That is not to say that all were well earned. No doubt some were for mere scratches, just as LBJ got a silver star in WWII basically to get him out of the war zone; MacArthur didn't appreciate politicians gallivanting around to get votes back home. But to single out one of Kerry's three purple hearts, when he was at least over there and getting shot at and rescuing a man, is pretty damned silly.
A friend of mine was so pissed about the slimeball attacks on Kerry's purple hearts by the Bushies that when he saw a jeep with a purple heart license plate and a "Another vet for Bush" bumper sticker, he asked the guy if he had earned his purple heart. That's obnoxious as hell, but perfectly fair in the light of the Bushies attacking Kerry's purple hearts. Either check them all or leave them all alone. Don't single out Kerry.
SCO at least went after somebody with lots of money, even if they did have a bogus case. Not much point going after a (small?) startup, it would probably cost more in lawyers than any money to be gained. My guess is just a bunch of scam artists hoping for a quick buck.
There have been plenty of analyses. The common letters (etaoinshrdlu...) are worn like they would be on a typewriter, and all the letters show slight variations in vertical and horizontal position and impression, just as they would be on a real mechanical typewriter. No one who had the patience for that kind of fakery would slip up on the obvious ones like letterhead.
Furthermore, interviews with the colonel's secretary says the tone of the letter and the information in it was exactly what was being talked about in the office at the time, that everyone knew how pissed the colonel was about Bush playing fast and loose with his obligation, and the pressure from above and outside to let Bush get away with it.
Bush signed up for 5 yars flight obligation and walked away from the last two years.
As for the rest of your comments, Bush is a lying whining coward. Sitting for 7 minutes reading a book like a deer in headlights while the country is udner attack --- what kind of bravery is that? Lying about the reasons for going to war is a lot more important than Clinton lying about who he had sex with. Whining about Kerry flipflopping when Bush has flipflopped over nation building, fiscal prudence, states rights, government bureaucracy -- he isn't even a republican!
He can't even take responsibility for anything. He hasn't even got the guts to say I was wrong, I made a mistake. He just barges on as though nothing has happened. That takes real moral courage. The buck sure doesn't stop anywhere near the White House these days.
Anyone who likes Bush is blind. Anyone who thinks he knows what he is doing has blinders on in addition.
The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong broke themsleves in the Feb 1968 Tet offensive but they kept on going. And maybe if we had not had those idiotic rules of engagement, we could have "won", if winning means utterly destroying the enemy, just as maybe we could "win" in Iraq if we had no rules of engagement, like leaving mosques alone even when used as firebases. But there's that famous quote -- we had to destroy the village in order to save it -- and what's the point? What would there be left worth having fought for?
It's their country. They are willing to die to give us the finger. We aren't prepared to destroy their country in order to "save" them.
The problem is the same as in Vietnam. War is serious business, it is not a game, and when you make up rules of engagement that tie both hands behind your back, then you aren't serious enough about it and should stay out. If you aren't prepared to destroy the enemy, then you should not go to war. If you have to wave around fact sheets full of moonshine statistics and rosy projections and speculate that another year, or two, or ever-so-many would win, then you aren't serious about it, and you should not be there at all.
This war was fought because Shrub wanted to finish Daddy's war. We ought to send Shrub and all those armchair neocon experts over there to finish what they started.
How common is it for the political party of another country to write the ruler's speech? That's what is really stinko here. They weren't Allawi's speechwriters, they were Bush's. Gaaaak. The man has no pride whatsover, either of them.