Authenticity of Bush Guard memos questioned
POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 06:30
VIEWED: 9503
PAGE 5 of 8
Whatever was in the coffee I hope you make some more and pass it around! I could use some of that thinking clarifier/ eloquence amplifier... that was an awesome post.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:
^^^ Wow. I mean wow. That's got to be the most eloquent post I've read here.
Planets stop in their orbits, suns explode, Ghoulman and I agree on something. Excellent analysis.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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^^^ and I too wonder if those documents are real. They do seem to be highly suspicious. Still it's nothing compared to the public documents that show Bushes Guard records were tampered less than a year ago. They plan ahead these Bushites.
Do I think Dan Rather fugged up? *pfft*, sure! After all... this whole 'fake docs' issue has served the Bushites beautifully. Nice little rat fuck eh? 'Course, it's just my observation.
FYI - rat fucking is what campaign people call 'dirty tricks' in campaigning. 
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Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:
^^^ and I too wonder if those documents are real. They do seem to be highly suspicious. Still it's nothing compared to the public documents that show Bushes Guard records were tampered less than a year ago. They plan ahead these Bushites.
Do I think Dan Rather fugged up? *pfft*, sure! After all... this whole 'fake docs' issue has served the Bushites beautifully. Nice little rat fuck eh? 'Course, it's just my observation.
FYI - rat fucking is what campaign people call 'dirty tricks' in campaigning.
Well, it was nice while it lasted.
While I agree that the Administration has been quick to make hay of the "fake documents", I have to think that it would have been an awfully risky tactic to have created and placed them in the first place.
To carry this out, someone in the Bush camp would have to:
1. Produce documents that would stand up to cursory review, but that could later be outed as fakes. A pretty fine line.
2. Get these documents to Rather via some route that Rather/CBS would trust enough to not do extensive validation of them. This seems the real stopper to me.
3. Blow the whistle, without being seen as the one doing so.
4. Cover their trail well enough that the entire resources of CBS News, not to mention every other news organization in the country, could never find a clue leading back to them.
Seems very high-risk and low benefit, considering the embarrassment if even a hint of Administration complicity leaked out.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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I'm still waiting for the whole thiung to play out. I'm sure that CBS has gone back to their source (who they say is unimpeachable) and are basically leaning on him (her) with "Look, we went ahead based on your say-so and we're getting hammered. Give us more to go on."
Even the people closest to the origin of the memos, such as Killian's secretary, agree that the memos accurately reflect the concerns and issues of the time. It's possible that Killian typed them a few years after the fact to memorialize what happened, or he had someone type them for him. Given what happened to a lot of Bush's official records, this may not be as paranoid-sounding as you think.
As far as Bush's OFFICIAL record is concerned, it doesn't take a recent, concerted effort to clean up the files. I'm sure that anything incriminating was simply not filed in the first place, worded VERY carefully, or eliminated shortly afterwards. Bush was handled as a "special case" from the very beginning. If you have ever gone back into medical records to file a complaint- as I have done- you will be surprised at how unrevealing the records are. In Bush's case, I wouldn't be surprised if they followed the medical dictum- CHART CONSERVATIVELY.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Even the people closest to the origin of the memos, such as Killian's secretary, agree that the memos accurately reflect the concerns and issues of the time.
Not sure that's exactly the case. From the original Aoociated Press article:
Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father and retired as a captain in 1991, said he doubted his father would have written an unsigned memo which said there was pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's performance review.
"It just wouldn't happen," he said. "No officer in his right mind would write a memo like that."
The personnel chief in Killian's unit at the time also said he believes the documents are fake.
"They looked to me like forgeries," said Rufus Martin. "I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years." Killian died in 1984."
The issue of the records themselves (the real ones) is about as germaine to the real issues of the election as John Kerry's records; not very. If Bush got "special treatment" to get him into the Guard, it wasn't any different than thousands, probably tens of thousands of sons of the rich or well-connected. If Kerry got Silver Stars for what other folks considered all in a day's work, or changed his mind about the war after he returned, that happened a lot too.
What should have the real impact is who was trying to game whom with the fakes. If the Administration was dumb enough to try to scam CBS at such risk and with such small potential return, they deserve to take the fall. I just don't see them being that dumb.
I'm really hoping CBS gets to the bottom of this. The latest AP report I saw indicates they are backtracking and checking their sources. I don't think thet their integrity in protecting sources would extend to someone who primed them with false info.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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But his secretary and best friend said it was an accurate reflection of the times.
Quote:
What should have the real impact is who was trying to game whom with the fakes.
This is a VERY limited and non-contextual view of the issue. Why would you just go to that point and stop? Why not try to discern the truth of that matter? Did Bush get preferential treatment? Did he serve his time? Were his OFFICIAL records faked, or redacted to the point of being fake? If Bush did not complete his service and missed physicals, why not? Was he too heavily involved in drugs and/or politics at the time? What WAS he doing then?
But even limiting the enquiry to "fake information", why stop at this memo? Expanding the scope to faked info in general, what about the forged documents on yellowcake uranium? The fake info from Chalabi? The fake costs analysis provided to Congress on drug benefits? The fake testimony of SBVT?
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:
What should have the real impact is who was trying to game whom with the fakes.
This is a VERY limited and non-contextual view of the issue. Why would you just go to that point and stop?
Because it's the topic of this thread? Where's Ghoulman and his "you're going off topic to distract us!" rants when I need one?
What's important about the CBS documents is whether they're fake or not, and, if they are fake, where they came from.
If you want to start yet another thread about that other stuff, please go ahead.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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CBS has many documents, not just those memos. What's important is whether the documents - memos included- reflect the truth. I asked those questions to put the topic back into context.
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It's hard to keep track of all the players without a scorecard. With that said, here I go . (Oh, and for the record, the coffee I made this morning wasn't as good as usual).
There's a whole bunch of stuff going on here (just off the top of my head in no particular order of relevance without any attempt to draw connections). The first is the relevance of Bush's National Guard service to this election. The second is the nature of that service (did Bush receive preferential treatment in getting in the Guard, did Bush fulfill his obligations while in the Guard, were steps taken on Bush's behalf to get an honorable discharge). The third is the nature of the documents Dan Rather reported on. The fourth is the paper trail of evidence concerning Bush's guard service. And a bunch more.
Is Bush's guard service relevant to this election? To me, not really. What is, in my mind, relevant is that Bush has continued to make claims over the years, and continuing to this day, about that service that are brought into question by evidence from a number of different sources (eyewitness as well as documentation). This is an issue of character. It's one thing to make mistakes in the past, own up to those mistakes, and move on. It's another to deny that mistakes were ever made, make claims that appear to not be substantiated by any evidence, and stick to that story. So the actual service itself in my mind is not as important an issue as what has been claimed about that service in all the years following.
What do we know about Bush's National Guard service? Bush has repeatedly claimed that he received no preferential treatment in getting into the guard. There are witnesses who say that he did (I can't really say anything about the accuracy of accounts from Barnes or Bush's Harvard professor). The only thing we can say for sure based on documentation is there was a long waiting list and that Bush made the cut with test scores that appear to be average. Bush completed flight training and from the records things appear to be going well until around 1972. Then something happens. Bush does not renew his flight physical. Bush requests to go to Alabama to work on a political campaign. There are questions about whether or not Bush ever showed up for duty in Alabama. Bush's superiors don't fill out an evaluation form. Bush requests early release to go to graduate school at Harvard. Bush is placed on inactive status. Bush is taken off inactive status and given an honorable discharge. From the paper trail it appears that Bush was turned over to Denver when he went to Harvard. Denver placed him on inactive. Some documents from Texas got him taken off inactive and then the discharge.
What do we know about the documents Dan Rather reported on? They are not duplicates of any of the files that the White House turned over in February, or that were released earlier this month, or that were received through FOIA requests by private citizens in 2000 and on. They appear to be from Killian's private files. There is solid evidence that these documents are forgeries. There is also solid evidence that these documents are an attempt at recreating documents which were in existence at one time (The reason that I say solid is that there is one truism I have learned over time – if you want to know what is really happening in an office you will talk to the secretary/admin. They are the gatekeepers and the keymasters.). CBS received these documents as faxes from a Kinko's in Texas and never actually saw originals. One expert verified that the signatures were Killian's. There was some doubt about the authenticity of the documents at CBS. Rather went with the story anyway. The documents were faxed to the White House before the story aired. The White House released these documents to reporters. When asked why the documents weren't questioned, the WH spokesperson said that they had no reason to think that they were not legit. This gets to an interesting point: what would the value add of these documents be? Do they add a
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