Bush AWOL, Refused Direct Order, Suspended. (UPDATE: Documents may be forged)

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Please check back after the election.

For those who want my opinion...the documents appear to be done in Word, and then copied repeatedly to make them "fuzzy". They use features that were not available on office typewriters the 1970s, specifically the combination of proportional spacing with superscript font. The IBM Executive has proportional spacing, but used fixed type bars. The Selectric has changeable type elements, but fixed spacing (some models could be selected at 10 or 12 pitch, but that's all). The Selectric Composer was not an office typewriter, but apparently did use proportional spacing. These were very expensive machines, used by printing offices, not administrative offices.

Here are scans of the Courier 12 font, and the Prestige Elite 72 font. Both were commonly used, and are sort of close to the font in the documents, but not quite. Notice that they are not proportionally spaced, so the typing looks very different from that on the memos. There is a superscript available for numbers, as used with footnotes, on the Symbol type balls. These balls were generally used for academics, such as preparing scientific and mathematical papers. I can find no "th" superscript in any of the IBM literature I have.

These are scans from a mid-1970s IBM Selectric Typewriter Type Styles brochure, IBM publication G542-0053-7, which does not appear to be explicitly copywrited.

At least my low opinion of TV news remains intact.

Originally posted by Johannmon
Valid or not who cares if Bush was Awol for a month or two 30 years or so ago. What difference does that make today. NONE!! Think about it people. What if every thing you did 30 years ago was held under a microscope. Would any little indiscretions appear? For the vast majority of people they would...

In a telephone interview from her Texas home, Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, described the records as "a farce," saying she was with her husband until the day he died in 1984 and he did not "keep files." She said her husband considered Bush "an excellent pilot."

CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards declined to respond to questions raised by experts who examined copies of the papers at the request of The Washington Post, or to provide the names of the experts CBS consulted. Experts interviewed by The Post pointed to a series of telltale signs suggesting that the documents were generated by a computer or word processor rather than the typewriters in widespread use by Bush's National Guard unit.

Originally posted by Jazzerman
Great find...and its an official document from the White House listed at the end of the article. Now, its going to be pretty hard for him to explain this. Of course, I know certain members of this board will tell us how these documents are false, etc. and defend Bush until their last breath...mark my words!

Originally posted by koji_K
Yup. It would be interesting to trawl the board for posts saying "he wasn't AWOL" when it was just so unbelievably obvious he was. If I only so I can say "I told you so" to every one of them.

Not very mature, but then, neither is our "President".

-koji K.

ABC News:The White House is declining to comment on the veracity of the documents. Many Democrats are worried that if they are found to be forgeries, it will be a setback for Sen. John Kerry's campaign to defeat Bush in November.

From there it was off to the races. Once anyone who had had experience writing and typing in the 1970s began examining the documents, it was impossible not to see some weird anachronisms that suggested they had been crafted not on a 1970s typewriter, but using Microsoft Word.

Charles Johnson, who runs the wonderful littlegreenfootballs.com, simply typed one of the memos over using Microsoft Word's New Times Roman font and, lo and behold, the document came out exactly identical to the one on the CBS site, down to the letter spacing.

The documents contain such features as superscript lettering, which is done automatically by Microsoft Word, and curly quotation marks. A brief glance at a Web site called selectric.org, run by an amateur typewriter fanatic, reveals dozens of IBM electric typefaces � and none of them has curly quotation marks.

By 3 o'clock, the very careful and honest Jim Geraghty, who produces invaluable material every day on nationalreview.com's Kerry Spot, was saying flatly, "CBS had better have one heck of a defense for this."

Originally posted by Seekerof LOL, like wtf dude?

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord

We can say with certainty these documents have been fabricated. What remains is who created them and why. Given what's happening, there are easily argued motives for both "sides" to have a hand in the creation of these fake documents.

The White House itself did not contest the memos' authenticity and handed them out to reporters. It continued on Thursday to handle questions based on the memos, particularly about the accusation that Bush had failed to take a physical "as ordered." The physical was required for Bush to remain a pilot.
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The New York Times
IHT