The Bush memos --- for IP

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Cliff Bamford <bamford () oz net>
Date: September 11, 2004 8:43:12 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: The Bush memos --- for IP
Reply-To: bamford () oz net

Dave, FactCheck.org, despite it's name, is anything but "impeccably
objective" -- go visit their homepage and you'll find this immediately
evident.

Please consider these points, which I've tried to make truly objective:

1. An order obtained by The Dallas Morning News shows that Col. Walter
"Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged March 1, 1972. CBS News reported 
this
week that a memo in which Staudt was described as interfering with 
officers'
negative evaluations of the future president's service was dated Aug. 
18,
1973.

2. The compelling engineering issue is not superscripted ligatures -- 
the
now overblown "th".  That glyph can be constructed (with considerable
effort) by the IBM Selectric Composer introduced in 1966. A more 
important
fact is that the Composer had no justification function that could have
automatically centered the headings of the purported 4May72 and 1Aug72
memos.  Centering those headings would have required careful measuring 
of
each line of text, doing the arithmetic, and then carefully typing each 
line
after setting tabs or counting spaces of the appropriate width.  It is 
of
course possible that the two memos used "preprinted" letterhead forms 
that
were produced that carefully.

3. There are near-compelling issues with line breaks and interline 
spacing.
As I'm sure you recall, the Carriage Return key on Selectrics was a 
button
you pressed yourself, when the margin bell that you manually set went 
off.
Also, the default interline width on the Selectric Composer was 
different
from the one used in MS Word --- which means the putative author of the 
72
memos would have had to chosen margin settings and non-default interline
spacing that miraculously resulted in memos that reproduced exactly the
output of Microsoft Word.

Although it is indeed POSSIBLE that the memos in question were created 
in
the 70s, what is the likelihood that anyone would produce, by accident, 
a
typewritten document that looks exactly like what Word produces on a 
laser
printer, given all the choices for typewriter setting that would be
necessary?  I think the chances are vanishingly small.


Cliff Bamford


----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: more on FactCheck.org on Bush Service documents
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 12:10:58 -0400



Begin forwarded message:

From: Paul Saffo <psaffo () iftf org>
Date: September 10, 2004 11:23:50 AM EDT
To: gaelwolf () waypt com
Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on FactCheck.org on Bush Service documents

Well, Factcheck is impeccably objective -- doubters are invited to
examine their track record. I am confident that they will confirm or
debunk (as appropriate) as the story evolves.

Until until more facts emerge, I will continue to reserve my opinion on
the veracity/falsity of the documents. There are demo tricksters who
are not above faking things. And of course Karl Rove started his
political career with a burglary of letterhead from a demo office, and
has several decades of very nasty work in his background.

When both sides have dirty hands, anything is possible.  And made more
complex when an anxious and ill-informed public is interested less in
the truth than in reading into events the outcome they yearn for.

-p


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