Have you heard the latest? Big Media may have relied on forged documents in a rush to bury George Bush.
Splashed on the Boston Globe’s front page yesterday was a “news” story about Bush’s National Guard service. I was inspired to castigate the quislings calling themselves “journalists,” and I referred to them as bitter and bored brats (because their guy is losing). Now it looks like they’re gullible, bitter and bored brats.
The blogosphere is buzzing tonight, but this blogger doesn’t have the energy to develop a full post. (I alliterate when it’s late.) I’ll deal with it in the A.M. In the meantime, Instapundit has a few links, and Power Line is all over it. Ramblings’ Journal also blogs, and read Speed of Thoughts’ thoughts. Hear how Hugh Hewitt views it. Even the fair Juliette (Oh, Romeo!) is caught up in the storm.
It is my fervent wish this revelation is true.
Reminder: Because of spam, comments with links will be held until I approve them. If you want your comment to show up tonight, don’t link. If it can wait until morning when I approve it, link away.
Update (9/10): CBS launches investigation. Excellent. Now this is what journalists are supposed to do! But why didn’t CBS investigate before airing the show?
Also, now I’m hearing that the White House released the forged memos. What is going on?
John Podhoretz tells us how the forgery story broke, and Donald Sensing is tracking developments.
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Darn you, La Shawn!
I was just going to link to INDC in the Bush Awol thread!!!!
I had my fingers all lined up over CTRL-V!!!
Oh well, never try to out master the mistress…
-Zola
I think this is an absolutely incredible story. If it turns out to be true, that these are forgeries (the analyzing I’ve read and the docs themselves sure make it appear so), I believe it will really rock the big media world. Or at least I hope so.
ROTFL
Me: Oh Roget, how do I define friends of Kerry in English words and phrases?
Roget’s Thesaurus: Let me count the ways…
Hence
Me: Alright, alright, that’ll do. Let’s not blow La Shawn’s disk space
This might interest you:
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/09/09/did_the_white_house_.html
“Feckless Friends of Kerry Fooled by Forgeries”. How funny! The only thing missing: “Millions Make Merry”.
Good Grief! Here the Globe goes again printing falsehoods. Will the desperate ever learn? Hmmmmmm…maybe we need to start hollering and complaining about a “Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy”.
The link has been rectified. Thanks.
You alliterate amazingly and, your rhymes: divine.
Unlike mine.
They won’t be the first to have been taken in by a forgery that said what they wanted to hear.
Niger and uranium anyone?
Carville probably doesn’t recognise a statesman when he sees one. That would lead to the obvious conclusion that if someone spoke what they truly felt was best for the country, rather than his/her party they must be on drugs.
The thing that has me convinced that they are forgeries is the ‘th’ thingie. Like 7th. Until Word, the th in that would look just like it looks, if my memory holds correctly. However, in the forged documents, the th is smaller and lifted, like how you know its supposed to be written. Back in 1972, typewriters did not do that, IMO.
LaShawn, regarding the White House’s release of the documents, they simply released the same documents which were sent to them by CBS.
This, if true, is serious business. I hope the FBI is checking into it. Whoever perpetrated this fraud should be locked up.
Why the White House released these documents?
they didnt actually release them, they have never had them. They only handed out to the press, what was given to them. No comments were added.
I think there are a few possible explanations. One. If the White House had atatcked the documents directly, it would have been seen as a Rep vs Dem thing. But by acting as if they are up front, and dont care what teh documents say, just give them to the public. It also contrasts with Kerry refusing to release his own records.
Now that third parties are the ones discrediting the documents, it is not seen as some White House coordinated attempt to discredit them.
I love your alliteration. You keep coming up with new reasons for me to love your blog!
I’m with Sean on this one.
Better to give them to the press with no comment beyond “Here’s what CBS gave us” than to make a comment when you haven’t had a chance to investigate.
Okay – what are we going to do about this kind of stuff? As long as the mainstream media advocates for the hard left we will be facing an uphill battle against these kind of smears. Sooner or later something’s got to give.
-jdm
You actually could roll the whatchamacallit back one notch to do superscripts. BUT the font would have been the same as in the text. That, plus the spacing not being consistent for all letters, tells me the sucker wasn’t typed on a typewriter.
Like you, La Shawn, I’m concerned that the WH (or let’s be real, the flunky who decided to release this) didn’t argue the veracity of these documents simply because they conflicted with the official story. That makes it look like they aren’t convinced of their own story.
CBS is sticking to their guns on this story. From the CBS website we have this quote:
“In addition, the documents are backed up not only by independent handwriting and forensic document experts but by sources familiar with their content,” the statement continued. “Contrary to some rumors, no internal investigation is underway at CBS News nor is one planned.” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml)
Looks like Dan Rather & Co. are going to continue to slam Mr. Bush no matter what cost to their credibility.
How odd that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth comments were always prefaced by Big Media as ‘the unsubstantiated charges…’, yet no mention of ‘the unauthenticated documents…’ in this story. What could the reason possibly be for such a lack of professionalism ? Hmmm….
Oh well, we’ll just see if Fox, NBC and ABC let CBS sit back and stick out their tongue. Any good newsie knows that if you quote an expert, you need to be ready to point the expert out. And so far, the top experts in the field are the ones saying it is fake…
Let the meltdown begin.
I think that it will be interesting to see how the other news networks and news outlets handle this story. The other TV news journals have a tremendous opportunity to bury 60 Minutes, and the other news anchorpersons have an opportunity to destroy Dan Rather. The question is will they? If they do, they in a sense betray their skewed “balance” which could only benefit Bush.
Also, If I were the Bush team I would be getting my lawyers together and sue the pants off of CBS for libel, because I believe that they could make a great case that malice was involved.
But they didn’t even flinch at the flagrant lies of “Fahrenheit 9/11″, and numerous other liberal fabrications. That just shows that the Bush family is better than their accusers.
Just my opinion.
You’re all very quick to decide that there was not the possibility of a typewriter in 1972 producing the kerning and font of the much-touted memo. I was working in an office in 1970-71 where we had the latest typewriters that had fonts that could be changed, and the spacing could be “kerned”. These typewriters caught on very quickly. I don’t know why so many people have decided that this was simply not possible back in the early seventies. It didn’t need to be a computer – the world was well beyond the manual typewriter copy that is being discussed as the only “type” of the time.
Jamala,
You’re talking about the National Guard, whose equipment budget is primarily funded by the State. Back in those days, I hardly think that they are going to buy the latest and the greatest for all of their units.
On the other hand, rank has its privileges (RHIP), so it wouldn’t surprise me if the Tx National Guard Bureau HQ in Austin did get the best for their executive staff, so Flight Ops might rank a machine somewhere between WWII vintage and IBM selectrics.
This is only typical of most bureaucracies. To wit, FBI HQ working amongst wood paneling and luxury trim while field offices run on DOS and Win 3x even in the 21st century.
Even if proven to be legit, you can’t discount the context of the time frame.
A unit typist typed up a form to be signed by the OIC. In this particular example, I believe it was just a case of routine paperwork, with no intention of enforcement, unless there was a verbal understanding of “or else”. Rather than ordering GW to take a physical, it was an authorization if he so chose to do so.
Why?
F102s were being phased out, transistioning to a F101 Voodoo (hmmm, voodoo economics?) training unit. In other words, winding down interceptor operations, of which reservist pilots maintain their hours by flying missions and bringing on full-time instructors to train pilots for the Air Force.
Plus the war was winding down, so pilots were de facto being given early-outs if it suited them, or if they were determined to stay in, it was up to them to find a way or a unit that would take them in.
Yes, orders are orders, but sometimes they can be optional, something to pull out when challenged, otherwise nada. In those cases, it is something that is between the person holding it and the person issuing it.
That’s nothing unusual. I’ve had commanders issue me orders so I could take advantage of something that otherwise might be denied to me based on my status.
My favorite example would be the time when several of us that were “ordered” to take a 3-day Alaskan King Salmon fishing vacation. The orders entitled us to fly roundtrip 1st class on a military plane and to stay in on-base billeting.
In my case, they returned without me because, after the second day, I left them to spend the rest of the summer camping out in the Prince William Sound–so sue me
.
Another example would be friends of mine who were regularily “ordered” to be on a plane flying down & back to the Virgin Islands for the weekend every month or so. Once there, they were on their own. So what happens if they didn’t go?
Bottomline, those making the most noise about AWOL don’t have a clue about how the Guard operates or chose to gloss over it.
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