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The Bush memos --- for IP
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 07:45:37 -0500
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 considerableeffort) 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 1Aug72memos. 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 ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- The Bush memos --- for IP David Farber (Sep 12)