RU|Bush guard memos are fake

Bush guard memos are fake

Ravenwood - 09/10/04 06:45 AM

CBS' news magazine '60 Minutes', who routinely runs infomercials for all the latest anti-Bush books, is touting new documents surrounding George Bush's National Guard service. Bush, who served for almost 6 years, is accused of being AWOL for a few months in 1972, toward the end of his term. The problem is that the documents, which '60 Minutes' claims are authentic, appear to have been created with a modern version of Microsoft Word. I'm going on record as saying that I'm convinced they are fake.

The problems with the document include:

Proportionally spaced fonts - Modern computers space the letters proportionally. That means 'i's and 'l's don't take up as much room as 'Q's and 'W's. But older typewriters and word processors used fixed pitch typeface. All the letters would be monospaced. That is, they take up the same amount of space, regardless of their actual width.

There is a tell-tale superscript 'th' in the word 111th. Superscripts are automatic in today's computer word processing programs, but 30 years ago it was almost unheard of. Even if you realigned the paper to raise the letters, changing their size would be extremely difficult using the technology of the day.

There is no letterhead, which is unusual for a government document.

The 'K' in the signature appears to be digitally cropped. Fred Skower, who teaches Typography at James Madison University notes, "You can't stop a ballpoint pen with a nice square ending like that ... The end of that 'K' should be round ... it looks like you took a pair of snips and cut it off so you could see the 'Jerry.'"

The text looks suspiciously close to Times New Roman, and contains curly quotation marks.

The kicker was this tidbit pointed out by Spoons: One of the memos dated August 1973, speaks about General Staudt applying pressure. The problem is that Staudt retired in 1972.

Of course the AP and CNN have picked up the story and are also running it as fact. It appears as though nobody has even bothered to fact check the memos. The AP/CNN story doesn't even mention that the validity of the memos is in question.

UPDATE: Major media is starting to catch up.

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Comments

If this is of any interest -

I showed the pdf memos to my dear old Mum who taught typing in the 50's through to the 70's (and is no fan of GWB). She spotted the fakery straight away. These "memos" are pure rubbish. The only thing that surprised her was that nobody spotted they were faked before broadcast.

Still if you're really desperate to believe something is true you may throw caution to the wind. Particularly if you're an arse.

regards

Posted by: JonT at September 10, 2004 3:25 PM