Bush Texas Air National Guard Memos are Forgeries

[Trebuchet]

A challenge: Can Sunmaster, or one of his conservative allies, prove that Bush fulfilled his military obligations?
Thought not.

 

[BenBurch]

We don't need this to be true to damn GWB, His actions as President did that and are so much worse a crime than taking a powder from your military service that there is really no point in discussing this matter.

 

[cmikes]

A challenge: Can Sunmaster, or one of his conservative allies, prove that Bush fulfilled his military obligations?
Thought not.

It doesn't matter to me in the slightest what Bush did in the National Guard, but why are you trying to reverse the burden of proof? If it matters to you what Bush did at the end of the Vietnam War, find your own proof.

 

[gregthehammer]

Lol

And thin skin too.

Heh? I don't get what ever this is.








LOL

 

[BStrong]

Who knew Laura Bush was an ISF member?

 

[Brainster]

This is indeed going to be something of a joke of a movie. I remember reading an excerpt of Mapes' book when it came out where she talked about how bloggers had discovered the memos used "peripheral spacing" (sic).

One would think that if you had lost your job over the point, you would know that it was actually "proportional spacing", but hey, she was in the news biz, where getting stuff like that right is secondary.

Kudos to Buckhead (a lawyer from Atlanta, who initially noticed the memos were too perfect for the IBM Selectric era), and to Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, for the amazing GIF that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had actually been produced with Microsoft Word.

Boos to Redford and the other clowns involved with this movie.

ETA: Incidentally, I think that even if the memos had been real, they would not have swayed the election. Any president running for a second term is judged on his first term, not on the rest of his past life. It's like somebody who thinks if Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky had been revealed, he would not have won in 1996. Character issues only matter when we don't know the person and are debating giving him the job--as they most certainly did with Bush's DUI story in the 2000 election. Once he's there, nobody gives a rat's patootie.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Rewriting history is part of Hollywood's job, at least according to them. See JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Good Night and Good Luck, Platoon, and about a million other movies.

I especially love JFK, where a vast right wing conspiracy, which includes a couple of thousand members of the US government, get together and kill a more classical liberal in order to put his much more progressive Vice President in office. It's like they were smart enough to pull of a conspiracy with literally thousands of moving parts, but yet were too dumb to check the line of succession.

3 of the 4 movies you mentioned are Oliver Stone movies. Maybe you just have a bone to pick with that one (very good) director.

 

[sunmaster14]

This is indeed going to be something of a joke of a movie. I remember reading an excerpt of Mapes' book when it came out where she talked about how bloggers had discovered the memos used "peripheral spacing" (sic).

One would think that if you had lost your job over the point, you would know that it was actually "proportional spacing", but hey, she was in the news biz, where getting stuff like that right is secondary.

Mapes is completely unrepentant. She still claims the only thing wrong with the memos is that the chain of custody couldn't be verified. I can't tell if she is just a brazen liar or completely delusional. Probably both.

<snip>

ETA: Incidentally, I think that even if the memos had been real, they would not have swayed the election. Any president running for a second term is judged on his first term, not on the rest of his past life. It's like somebody who thinks if Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky had been revealed, he would not have won in 1996. Character issues only matter when we don't know the person and are debating giving him the job--as they most certainly did with Bush's DUI story in the 2000 election. Once he's there, nobody gives a rat's patootie.

I think you're right in theory, but not in practice when it comes to a Republican. Although few would care about Bush's military service from 30 years before, when they have his 1st term to judge him on, the media would have used the story to bludgeon him for 8 weeks. The relentless focus would have not only stopped him from getting a positive message out about himself and a negative message out about Kerry, but it would have eventually persuaded people, just through repetition, that Bush was a shirker and a "fortunate son" (as in the CCR song). In fact, there is already solid evidence that this would have happened. First, the national guard memo story dominated the front page of every major newspaper in the country, without any doubts being raised about the authenticity of the memos, and, second, Kerry's campaign had already prepared an advertising blitz codenamed "Fortunate Son."

Given how close the election turned out to be, I find it hard to believe that Kerry wouldn't have won if the memos had not been proved to be forgeries. Regardless, Rather and Mapes clearly believed that the memos would sway the electorate. That was their #1 motivation for pushing the story.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Badly forged memos are so ten years ago. These days it's all about fake fetus videos.

 

[The Don]

3 of the 4 movies you mentioned are Oliver Stone movies. Maybe you just have a bone to pick with that one (very good) director.

Well add to the long list of historically inaccurate films:

- Braveheart
- U571
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
- Pearl Harbor
- The Patriot

It really is a target-rich environment.

 

[sunmaster14]

Well add to the long list of historically inaccurate films:

- Braveheart
- U571
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
- Pearl Harbor
- The Patriot

It really is a target-rich environment.

Historically inaccurate is not the same as historically reversed. From information and belief, "Truth" is akin to making a movie about the Germans liberating France from an Anglo-American occupation (after bombing Pearl Harbor probably).

Furthermore, those movies above were made for entertainment purposes, not to further a political agenda. It remains to be seen if "Truth" is entertaining.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Historically inaccurate is not the same as historically reversed. From information and belief, "Truth" is akin to making a movie about the Germans liberating France from an Anglo-American occupation (after bombing Pearl Harbor probably).

Furthermore, those movies above were made for entertainment purposes, not to further a political agenda. It remains to be seen if "Truth" is entertaining.

Most importantly, art can be about Germany liberating France. Art shod be judged on its own merit and historical accuracy should have zero weight, especially in documentary ( no one mentioned those yet).

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Sorry, I missed this post before. No, I am not calling anybody here a liar. I am quite certain that there was a vigorous discussion at the time, no doubt beginning the very night of the broadcast in question, i.e. Sep 8, 2004. I have reason to believe though that that discussion has been deleted from the forum. Perhaps the deletion was accidental. But it could have also been seen as convenient as well. I can imagine that a lot of Bush detractors were memo defenders, and therefore ended up with egg on their faces and would have been very happy to see the threads disappear.

Conspiracy subforum that-a-way -->
where we can discuss that the obvious-fake memo was a replacement for a real memo.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

If I recall, Bush won re-election in 2004. I'm guessing the impact of these forged documents were zero to nil. But what do I know.

Dan Rather and the reputation of 60 Minutes never really recovered, and the published use of forgeries destroyed any chance of discussing Bush's NG record, so Rove's plan worked.

 

[Ziggurat]

Dan Rather and the reputation of 60 Minutes never really recovered, and the published use of forgeries destroyed any chance of discussing Bush's NG record, so Rove's plan worked.

I'm hoping you said that in jest. I think you are, but, well, Poe.

If not, the idea suffers from the same flaw that the Princess Diana assassination theory does: why would anyone engage in such an elaborate conspiracy when it could be defeated by such simple, elementary measures on the part of the victim? Had Diana worn a seat belt, she wouldn't have died. Had Rather or Mapes noticed that the document obviously doesn't look typewritten, they might not have aired it. The subsequent observation that they failed to take these measures is not something that could have been relied upon during the planning.

 

[Cleon]

I really don't see how Rove fits into it. CBS and Rather screwed that pooch themselves, without any assistance from Republican operatives.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Someone generated an obviously fake memo. I blame Rove. Irrational perhaps, but I'm willing to reassign blame in the light of new facts.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Someone generated an obviously fake memo. I blame Rove. Irrational perhaps, but I'm willing to reassign blame in the light of new facts.

How about not assigning any blame until you have evidence of involvement. As it is, you are not saying you ha e any evidence of his involvement.

 

[Giordano]

How about not assigning any blame until you have evidence of involvement. As it is, you are not saying you ha e any evidence of his involvement.

Yes, let no one here offer their unsubstantiated opinion. Especially in a thread based on a movie that no one has yet to see.

 

[Random]

I'm hoping you said that in jest. I think you are, but, well, Poe.

If not, the idea suffers from the same flaw that the Princess Diana assassination theory does: why would anyone engage in such an elaborate conspiracy when it could be defeated by such simple, elementary measures on the part of the victim? Had Diana worn a seat belt, she wouldn't have died. Had Rather or Mapes noticed that the document obviously doesn't look typewritten, they might not have aired it. The subsequent observation that they failed to take these measures is not something that could have been relied upon during the planning.

The document did look typewritten at first glance, but Microsoft Word was designed to make documents look like they had come out of a typewriter, so a supposedly typewritten letter looking like a Microsoft Word document was not a silver bullet in and of itself. They also didn’t have the original document to look at, but a low-quality photocopy, ruling out a lot of testing methods. The forgery was proven by looking at various aspects of the typed document and being unable to find a contemporary typewriter that shared all those aspects. It should have been spotted during authentication though, and there is no excuse for that.

Buckhead’s quick response did strike me as odd at the time. But I figured he was some kind of typewriter nut who happened to be a conservative winger. There are a lot of conservatives out there, and conservative and typewriter nut are not mutually exclusive categories.

Now that I think of it, I also found it odd that everyone went after Rather like a pack of wild jackals, but Burkett (the source of the memos) seemed to hardly be mentioned.

Oh well, if it was a Rove ploy, it was well executed. All discussion of Bush’s questionable service in Alabama stopped cold.