Authenticity of Bush Guard memos questioned
POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 06:30
VIEWED: 9503
PAGE 7 of 8
That's a great catch, LostInTheVerse. I'm kicking myself for not having noticed that. I did a quick search of documents released by the White House as part of Bush's files and could not find any that had a PO Box. The only address that I have found is:
111th Ftr Intcp Sq
Ellington AFB, Texas
TexANG (ADC)
For an example of the address you can check out one of the documents, "Bush’s May 2, 1973 Officer Effectiveness Training Report":
http://www.glcq.com/docs/oer_5-2-73.htm
These forgeries are looking sloppier and sloppier with every bit of new evidence. Rather and CBS are certainly looking unprofessional in this episode.
I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!
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Sloppy indeed!
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Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
I was actually thinking something along similar lines, Arawaen, in terms of military service. Of course, this might have been partly influenced by my recent re-reading of "Starship Troopers". I think Michael Moore provided a useful service in Fahrenheit 911 when he publicized how members of Congress are not immediately impacted by war (due to very few of them having children in the military).
Somehow, seeing Robert Heinlein and Michael Moore referenced in the same paragraph gives me peculiar feeling.
But let's have some fun with numbers. Out of the 535 members of congress, there are only about 400 who might possibly have children of military age(after factoring out those single, under 40, or over 70. If I had a research staff, I'd find out exactly how many had children of military age). So we have one out of these roughly 400 possible congress persons and their spouses with a child in Iraq (per Moore). Sounds pretty bad. But wait, there's more.
Current US strength in Iraq is around 114,000. Last year there were around 51 million Married Filing Joint tax returns. Let's drop 10% for those too young or old to have military age children, leaving us with about 46 million. 46 million divided by 114,000 = 403 (more or less). So only one in 403 possible non-congressional couples has a child in Iraq. Makes our representatives look a bit less bad, doesn't it? Wish I had the time to find exact figures, but this rough approximation gives you the idea.
Quote:
You could be right, Geezer, that Bush wanted to fly because his father had been a pilot. I haven't read anything to support this, but I'll be curious about the results of your research.
I did find this, in GWB's biography on the US Embassy, Japan site. I'll try to find some more.
"George W. graduated from Yale in May of 1968 with a major in history. Two weeks before graduation, he went to the offices of the Texas Air National Guard at Ellington Air Force Base outside Houston to sign up for pilot training. One motivation, he said, was to learn to fly, as his father had done during World War II. George W. was commissioned as a second lieutenant and spent two years on active duty, flying F-102 fighter interceptors. For almost four years after that, he was on a part-time status, flying occasional missions to help the Air National Guard keep two of its F-102s on round-the-clock alert."
http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-2902.html
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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It looks like CBS is ready to admit they were deceived!
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20guard.html?ei=50
06&en=42f1be2f0a0efa9d&ex=1096344000&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=
Hey, Dan Rather, nice job screwing up! 
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I don't think the question is as much do our representatives have children or family in Iraq specifically, but rather do they have children or family in the armed services at all, now or in the past. It doesn't really matter if they are stationed in S. Korea, Germany or stateside. Only one member of congress has a child in the enlisted ranks anywhere in the military (if I recall correctly), not sure what the number of officers is.
I also don't think we need to limit it to Congressmen, we can easily include Cabinet positions and political advisors. Anybody involved in policy decisions and collecting a check from the Federal government.
I loved the fact that in Heinlein's Starship Troopers everybody started as enlisted. Those with officer material were pulled from the enlisted ranks and trained to be officers rather than beginning as officers.
The Heinlein novel was proposing military service as a prerequisite to voting, let alone holding public office. This is a far cry from what Michael Moore was saying, his only motivation was to score points against his opponents, but I doubt he would be saying the same thing if the political polarity was reversed.
I would be excluded under this system as I was rejected for health reasons when I tried to enlist, though technicaly in a true 'Heinlein' system they would have had to find me a job somewhere.
Personally I don't want Bush or Kerry to be president. To borrow the tag line from the recent AvP movie (the tag line being better than the movie), 'No matter who wins, we lose!'
Um, I'm lost. Uh, I'm Angry. And I'm Armed.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Arawaen:
I don't think the question is as much do our representatives have children or family in Iraq specifically, but rather do they have children or family in the armed services at all, now or in the past. It doesn't really matter if they are stationed in S. Korea, Germany or stateside. Only one member of congress has a child in the enlisted ranks anywhere in the military (if I recall correctly), not sure what the number of officers is.
Moore's site says 4 were in service and one in Iraq as of when the movie was made.
My point was more about how Moore used true figures out of context to insinuate that the Government would go to war because they were personally risking less than the average citizen. Based on my little math excercise above, I'm not so sure that's true.
I've not got the time to do the research on all 600 or so members of Congress and senior Administration figures, but I'd bet that the proportion of their children who have been or are in the military is about the same asthat of the portion of the general population that meets the same age and marriage demographic.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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HERE IS DAN RATHER'S STATEMENT!
Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.
Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.
But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.
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And CBS's Statement.
(CBS) Below is the text of the CBS News statement on its use of documents purportedly written by President Bush's National Guard commander:
Bill Burkett, in a weekend interview with CBS News Anchor and Correspondent Dan Rather, has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents used in the Sept. 8 "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard.
Burkett, a retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, also admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source.
Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point. Burkett’s interview will be featured in a full report on tonight’s CBS Evening News with Dan Rather (6:30-7:00 p.m., ET/PT).
In light of this and other developments reported by CBS News and other news organizations, CBS News President Andrew Heyward issued the following statement:
“'60 Minutes Wednesday' had full confidence in the original report or it would not have aired. However, in the wake of serious and disturbing questions that came up after the broadcast, CBS News has done extensive additional reporting in an effort to confirm the documents’ authenticity.
That included an interview featured on last week’s edition of "60 Minutes Wednesday" with Marian Carr Knox, secretary to the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the officer named as the author of the documents; the interview with Bill Burkett to be seen tonight; and a further review of the forensic evidence on both sides of the debate.
Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret. Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting. We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust.”
CBS News and CBS management are commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken. The names of the people conducting the review will be announced shortly, and their findings will be made public.
©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/20/politics/main644539.shtml
Given Burkett's previous anti-Bush statements, does this let the Administration off the hook for providing the documents, or do we just move deeper into X-files territory?
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
What you'll find is that the memos will be authenticated as much as any multiply-copied document can be, and the story will sink out of sight with no apologies and no retractions... along with "Nuclear Weapons Found in Iraq!" and "John Kerry shoots self to get a medal!" and other right-wing idiocies.
It's too bad the people who keep spewing this crap don't ever get embarassed about being so wrong so often.
Well, I guess even a stopped "Not really right-wing, just skeptical" clock is right twice a day.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Thanks for posting this, CrevanReaver. I personally think this statement falls under a category I have called "weak sauce". The main point comes in the last paragraph and you've got to wade through a lot of, "well here's why it's not my fault" before you get there. Here's how I would have done it:
I presented documents in my report that are forgeries. I made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. For more details on the information I used to make the decision to present these documents, please read the attached article.
-SoupCatcher if he was Dan Rather
But that's just me. When you make a mistake, admit the mistake. Then determine how you made the mistake. And make sure that it doesn't happen again.
As far as Michael Moore goes... (sorry for the Heinlein juxtaposition, Geezer - In retrospect, I could've put a line break between the two sentences and still said what I wanted to say 
) Whether or not I agree with his opinion on the information, I think he did a service simply by presenting it. Members of congress, on the average, do not have children in the military. Is this representative of the population as a whole? Like you, I wish I had a research staff. The factors that I would look at are income and children in the military. Here is the assumption that I was working under (with no statistics to back it up): the average income for families that have children in the military is less than the average income for families of members of congress. We have a professional military. If you look at the demographics of our military, it is different than the demographics of congress (in terms of ethnicity, gender, and income level). Of course, the demographics of congress are different than the demographics of the country as a whole. And the demographics of the military are different than the demographics of the country as a whole. What it boils down to is that we have a group who leads and a group who protects and there isn't much overlap between the two.
That's kind of where I was going with the Heinlein reference. He presented a world where those who lead were a subset of those who protect.
Another thing I would look at if I had a research staff would be degrees of separation. It would not surprise me if a huge majority of us fireflyfans either served or are serving in the military or have a family member who served or is serving in the military. Or, at the very least, a friend (I'm referring to voluntary service - post draft). Neither me or my brother joined the military - but cousins, neighbors, friends, in-laws, you name it. What I'm getting at is that I think most of us know and care about someone who is right now in harms way as a member of the military. I would be very surprised if that was the case with members of congress. (Okay, I'll put away the broad sweeping generalization brush for now ).
Thanks, Geezer, for posting that paragraph from Bush's biography. I'll look in more detail at that later today.
I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!
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