Regarding all the stuff that has now come out regarding George W. Bush’s apparent failure to fulfill his duties in the Texas Air National Guard, I refer you to what Josh says:
And, finally, let’s not miss the obvious point here. This isn’t about what President Bush did 30+ years ago. Or at least it’s not primarily about that. The issue here is that for a decade President Bush has been denying all of these things. He did so last January. He did so again as recently as last month. He’s continued to cover this stuff up right from the Oval Office.
Putting it another way is Kevin Drum, regarding the just-now-released memos on Bush’s service by the White House:
The real question now is: what other documents does the White House have? Obviously they’ve had these sitting around for a while, and just as obviously they’ve held them back even though they claimed in February that they had made available every known document related to Bush’s National Guard record.
So what else are they hiding? And when are they going to approve AP’s FOIA request to view all relevant microfilm records directly?
(UPDATE: See update here. The White House did not have its own copies of those memos, just what CBS faxed to them.)
Eric Boehlert puts the pieces together into a narrative. Read and decide for yourself.
Finally, I note that Dan Bartlett is saying you can’t read the mind of a dead man. (Full transcript of the Bartlett interview here. I have to say, this (PDF) seems pretty clear to me:
18 August 1973
Memo to FileSUBJECT: CYA
1. Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I’m having trouble running interference and doing my job. Harris gave me a message today from Grp regarding Bush’s OETR and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it. Bush wasn’t here during rating period and I don’t have any feedback from 187th in Alabama. I will not rate. Austin is not happy today either.
Names and acronyms explained here.
Denying ALL OF THESE THINGS?!
Every charge the fringe left can muster on this topic? All of them? For a decade?
“Josh,” et al., are overreaching. Better be careful. Ya’ll are gonna give yerselves rhetorical hernias. 🙂
Kevin Drum has an update:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004658.php
“UPDATE: I now have copies of the memos the White House released, and they are just versions that CBS faxed to the White House the day before the 60 Minutes segment aired. There’s no indication that the White House had its own copies of these memos and had been sitting on them.
Apologies.”
And now we learn that these memos are fake. The memos have a proportional font that was extremely rare, and more importantly, a “th” superscript that didn’t exist in any early 70’s typewriter or word processor. (See littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog for a convincing demonstration that the memos were produced on a recent version of Microsoft Word.)
Busted. What a bunch of willing dupes, from 60 minutes on down to the news websites repeating the memo story credulously.
Fake? Who sez?
Evidence, please.
IBM invented proportional type typewriters in 1944. They released the Executive Model A in 1948, with the magic of proportional type. The ‘faked’ story is a bad bandwagon to jump on.
You guys might want to look at the link I reference above, and read the part of my comment about the “th” superscript. It is also reported that proportional font typewriters were not in use at that time by the Guard, certainly not for a mere memo. (And certainly not exactly lining up with the 2004 version of Microsoft Word, see the first link.) This looks like a clean bust to me, very embarrassing for the dems and their lackeys in the press.
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog
http://www.powerlineblog.com
http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/000838.php
Really odd that nobody linked to
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2004/9/10/34914/1603
or, hunter if you want it linkable…?