Bush National Guard Thread pt.2

[Dante]

Holy crap that one got big fast... anyways, you know the rules.

Keep the discussion going here.

[Chris M.]

Good God man, no!

That thread, and the whole issues needs to die a rapid death.

Carry on. :D

[superdave]

Dante, you're like the Americans in WW I...come in when everyone's exhausted and ready to quit, and then declare yourself the decisive influence! :)

[Claymore]

Dante, you're like the Americans in WW I...come in when everyone's exhausted and ready to quit, and then declare yourself the decisive influence! :)

Why do you hate our WW I vets? Why? Why? ;)

[peledre]

So I've got a humble pie fresh out of the oven for Double-D, you guys hungry?

[mozilla]

CBS News has gone into full "CYA" mode. After being attacked continuously for the past six days by everyone ranging from posters at FreeRepublic.com, to Web sites like RatherBiased.com, Powerline, and Instapundit.com, to large media organizations like The Washington Post, The New York Times, and its network television rivals, CBS mounted another defense of itself tonight.

Just as his Friday defense (see our rebuttal here) failed to convince, Rather's Monday defense was almost completely ineffectual. Several points stand out:

1. Rather finally stated that not all of his critics are politically motivated, something he was unwilling to do last Friday.

2. Rather's report did not feature a single quotation from any of its critics, something that an objective news organization would do if it were covering the story of accusations made by political campaigns against each other. For CBS Evening News viewers who have not been following the scandal, this must have been a strange spectacle. To receive no background on the story and only one side of it. Update 08:40: On FNC's Fox and Friends, former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg remarks: "I've been watching watching television news since I was five years old or thereabouts. I have never in my life seen a more one-sided piece, in the history--in the history, of television. Everybody in that story backed up, to one degree or another, CBS News's position in this. It was absolutely disgraceful."

3. Bill Glennon, the typewriter repair guy whom CBS featured tonight said that the documents "could have" been prepared on a 70s-era typewriter with "custom feature" attachments, hardly a ringing endorsement, especially since he failed to specifically name a typewriter which did have the capability. That a hypothetically very expensive typewriter using optional parts could even be found in a National Guard unit which normally operate with hand-me-down office equipment from the full-time services hardly seems likely.

4. Richard Katz, the "software designer" of unnamed employer clearly is not familiar with Microsoft Word. To disable its automatic superscripting, all one has to do is put a space after a word before typing the "th". What kind of software expert is not aware of that?

5. Referring to one of the memos which appears to use the letter "L" instead of the number one, Katz according to Rather, says that "would be difficult to reproduce on the computer today." That is complete nonsense. Is it really that hard for someone to type "L" instead of "1" within Microsoft Word?

6. Does the el versus one point made by CBS hold water? One of our readers responds:

"As an 'old' teacher who was teaching 'typing' in the 1970's, let me submit one more item that could be added to the list of discrepancies: Even with the advent of the IBM Selectric typewriter, we continued to teach students to use the lower case of the letter L for several years because it was presented that way in the book!!

"It took me years to personally convert to using the number 1 on the top row of the keyboard; and, I submit to you anyone who learned to type by the touch method in the 1960's and/or early 1970's continued to use the lower case of the letter L.--because it was learned intuitively."

Peter Nelson has further thoughts on this.

7. Rather's defense failed to note any of the arguments made by Jerry Killian's family who said he never took notes, said he did not have others make them for him, and said that CBS refused to put them on the air. The anchor also failed to respond to remarks from many of CBS's sources who have either backed away from, or outright denounced the memo story as false.

8. Just days after a former CBS official denounced internet forum posters and bloggers as "a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas," it appears that CBS may have used one such pajama person as a new "expert" source. According to The New York Times, Bill Glennon, typewriter repairman, is said to have "posted his thoughts on the memos on a blog." The Times also reports that he spent a whole "fifteen minutes" looking at CBS's documents.

9. CBS's original expert, Marcel Matley, who has since backed away from supporting the network's case that the documents are genuine, has a very checkered past according to New York Post. In 1995 court testimony, Matley acknowledged that he had had no formal training in a document lab, or in "machines, typewriters, photocopies." The paper also discovered that Matley has published works on "spirituality in handwriting" and "female/male traits in handwriting," with such lines in them as: "For your male client, you will be able to recognize the facade of machismo--and also recognize the hurt boy-child who uses that as a defensive hiding place."

10. Rather also failed to respond to a barrage of charges raised by Washington Post, including confirmation of a scoop first reported by RatherBiased.com that Bush's Air National Guard office did not use expensive IBM typewriters capable of printing documents in a proportional font.

11. Other Post points: More typographical concerns raised by a genuine expert in fonts, Joseph Newcomer; incorrect addresses; improper military signature lines and abbreviations; quotes from Thomas Phinney, a font developer at Adobe (the company which oversaw the late 1980s modification of Times New Roman into its current form), who doubts the memos' authenticity; and more backtracking from Matley.

12. At the end of the piece, reporters Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz talk to Sandy Genelius, one of our favorite spokesfriends at CBS News. She apparently didn't get the memo from Dan to defend at all cost, backpedaling tremendously from Rather's knee-jerk: "In the end, the gist is that it's inconclusive. People are coming down on both sides, which is to be expected when you're dealing with copies of documents."

13. Rather's response also failed to respond to critics who raised finer points about the font issues, including one point about kerning raised by Stephan Braddy, a software engineer who appears to have launched a new blog with a first post on Memogate stating that all available evidence suggests that "it is a mathematical certainty that the CBS Bush National Guard documents are fraudulent."

"The fact that the CBS Bush National Guard overlay matches perfectly and shows no signs of compounding deviation makes it a mathematical certainty that the two documents were both created by Microsoft Word, and therefore not in 1973. It is nearly impossible to create two documents with two different kerning systems that can survive the overlay test, especially if those two kerning systems are separated by 30 years in technology and design."

14. It's also worth noting that the two "experts" used to support its evidence Monday night were not involved with the original authentication and had merely looked at the online copies of the documents, something which Rather on Friday said he had a problem with, given that "deterioration occurs each time a document is reproduced and the documents being analyzed outside of CBS have been photocopied, faxed, scanned and downloaded and are far removed from the documents CBS started with which were also photocopies." Strangely, Dan did not repeat this assertion Monday night.

15. In the CBS response, the overall strategy seemed to be to convince viewers that certain technologies did exist during the time the disputed memos are said to have been written. But, even if all of CBS's critics are wrong in pointing out anachronistic typographical, formatting, and circumstancial errors, simply proving that a technology existed concurrently with a past event does not imply that it was available to those who engaged in that action. CBS must prove, or present sufficient evidence to suggest that such technologies were used by Killian or his commanders. But the evidence that both RatherBiased.com and The Washington Post turned up suggests the opposite.

Source (http://ratherbiased.com/news/)

[peledre]

From Mozilla's post:
Matley acknowledged that he had had no formal training in a document lab, or in "machines, typewriters, photocopies."
So you're wrong there too Dave. I think it's about time to wave the white flag.

[Chicago1871]

First page!

[peledre]

So it turns out that "Document Expert" Glennon that CBS had on Monday, is really a typewriter repairman who initially was posting on dailykos.com. You'd have to think by the end of the week CBS will be putting 5 year old kids on TV to defend the memos.

[GringoTex]

From Mozilla's post:
Matley acknowledged that he had had no formal training in a document lab, or in "machines, typewriters, photocopies."
So you're wrong there too Dave. I think it's about time to wave the white flag.
Yesterday, you were staking most of your argument on the fact that typewriters used in TANG offices in 1972 could not reproduce the report. When I asked you what kind of typerwriters TANG used in 1972, you didn't have a clue.

[peledre]

Yesterday, you were staking most of your argument on the fact that typewriters used in TANG offices in 1972 could not reproduce the report. When I asked you what kind of typerwriters TANG used in 1972, you didn't have a clue.
Apparently you have what we like to call a "reading problem":


Posted yesterday, 3:53p.m. here (http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=136692&page=22&pp=40)
Well the Arizona army offices of Ft. Huachuca, AZ used IBM Selectric IIs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/f/fd/Selectric2.jpg

This is currently the only typewriter that is being theorized that could possibly reproduce the documents, the Selectric Composer:
http://www.ibmcomposer.org/SelComposer/images/MyComposer1.jpg

If an Army clerk's office didn't have the Selectric Composer, the Air National Guard sure as hell didn't I figured maybe you'd be smart enough to figure that out, I guess I overestimated you Gringo. Sorry, won't happen again.

Let me impersonate Superdave for a minute.

Lying is a violation of the TOS of this forum.

Pathetic.

[GringoTex]

Apparently you have what we like to call a "reading problem":


If an Army clerk's office didn't have the Selectric Composer, the Air National Guard sure as hell didn't I figured maybe you'd be smart enough to figure that out, I guess I overestimated you Gringo. Sorry, won't happen again.

Let me impersonate Superdave for a minute.

Lying is a violation of the TOS of this forum.

Pathetic.
You were screeching about how TANG offices had no typewriters that could reproduce the documents BEFORE I called you on your bluff. Then you scurried off to do some research and found out that some Army clerk in Arizona used an IBM Selectric and announced it as proof that the Air Force in Texas did, too.

The truth is, you still have no idea what typewriters TANG offices in Texas used.

[peledre]

The truth is, you still have no idea what typewriters TANG offices in Texas used.
Well I can tell you one thing, there weren't any magic typewriters in there that can reproduce exactly the default settings of a microsoft word document. So my comment stands.

[Casper]

Well I can tell you one thing, there weren't any magic typewriters in there that can reproduce exactly the default settings of a microsoft word document. So my comment stands.
I can state definitively that no magic typewriters were used.

[Chicago1871]

Well I can tell you one thing, there weren't any magic typewriters in there that can reproduce exactly the default settings of a microsoft word document.
You got proof that the ANG didn't have magic typewriters that it only used for special occasions? ;)

[peledre]

You got proof that the ANG didn't have magic typewriters that it only used for special occasions? ;)
What, you mean I can't pass off stuff like this on my reputation alone without any real proof to back me up? I guess I must not be as cool as Dan Rather yet.

[Chicago1871]

What, you mean I can't pass off stuff like this on my reputation alone without any real proof to back me up? I guess I must not be as cool as Dan Rather yet.
For you to pass that kind of stuff off you need at least one glowing nipple. For the moment, magic typewriters could have been used. If you want that theory to be completely discounted, you might want to be nice to somebody and hope for reciprocation, or tell a funny joke.

[Claymore]

Maybe I've missed it, but the WH sure is being quiet about this "forged memo" thing. You'd think they'd be all over it if there was even the slightest credible hint of forgery.

Two possibilities:

1. Bush knows these memos are true, or at least the background holds true, so he's keeping his yap shut.

2. He knows they're false and he's waiting for Kerry to start waving them around so Bush can ambush him.

[peledre]

Perhaps whoever typed these up on word should've used this (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=41816&item=3839925186&rd=1) instead.

[peledre]

For you to pass that kind of stuff off you need at least one glowing nipple. For the moment, magic typewriters could have been used. If you want that theory to be completely discounted, you might want to be nice to somebody and hope for reciprocation, or tell a funny joke.
I had a golden nipple until there was a conspiracy to have my golden nipple taken away concocted by Jesse Hertzberg and Dan Rather that rep. be time-rated instead of simply cumulative.