September 2004 Blogs

Ra^ththergate's Lack of Mistakes

What a cracking story about US TV Anchorman Dan Rather's forged documents, apparently signed by George Bush's (now long dead) commanding officer Lt Col Jerry Killian. They purportedly demonstrate George Bush's flaky service with the National Guard in the 1970s, and efforts to use influence to facilitate him. They were apparently written in order to be filed away rather than sent to anyone.

Dan Rather is, of course, America's most revered newscaster, the equivalent perhaps of the BBC's David Dimbleby or Channel 4's Sir Trevor MacDonald.

He broke his story on CBS's flagship “60 Minutes” programme, whose equivalent in the UK is the BBC's “Panorama” and in Ireland RTÉ's “Prime Time”.

The list of evidence that the four memos he presented, such as this one, are phony is astonishing.

The memos use military phraseology and abbreviations that were not in use in the 1970s (eg grp for group - should have been gp)

Killian did not use the customary form of his own rank and position

There are doubts about the veracity of Killian's signature and handwriting

The memos were typed in New Times Roman, a font not available to the public until the 1980s

They include the superscript th, as in 111^th, which Microsoft Word produces automatically, but which no typewriter in the 1970s was capable of typing

The formation of the letters, the variable pitch, the spacing, the word-wrapping and the overall layout correspond exactly with the default settings of Microsoft Word - an impossible coincidence

The wife and son of Killian say that he never typed, rarely even wrote, relying instead on his memory

Various events and people do not match up date-wise (eg Col Staudt had left the service 17 months before he supposedly pressured Bush's supervisor)

Not a single document-expert has supported the genuineness of the documents

The mistakes are so obvious - many spotted by bloggers within an hour of publication - that the the forger was undoubtedly someone too young to have used the mechanical or mechanical/electric typewriters that pre-dated personal computers.

But I am not; I've been touch-typing since 1962, and until PCs came along never went anywhere without my trusty portable. And for this reason, I have observed one further piece of irrefutable evidence that no-one seems to have picked up on.

The memos are typographically faultless.

not a single spelling mistake or correction,

no black squares,

no overwritten letters,

no double spaces,

no missing words or letters hand-inserted with a ballpoint, and

nothing manually scratched out.

Believe me, that is impossible for any but the most skilled and dedicated typist, carefully and meticulously wielding those white correction pads and prepared to retype entire pages when the corrections could not be adequately disguised.

Could a non-typist have produced such perfect documents ? NO

Would a non-typist, or even a skilled typist have bothered with such perfection for memos destined only for his/her own files ? NO

This piece of evidence alone is enough to prove forgery.

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Excusing the Beslan Murderers

Dominic Bryan is an academic with Queens University Belfast. In commenting on 7th September in the (subscription-only) Irish Times on the evil terrorist murder of countless children, teachers and others in Beslan, he accuses America and Britain of terrorism, and says terrorism is anyway nothing new, so what's the big deal. And he ends with this outrageous apologia for the conduct of the murderers.

“We have to attempt to understand why non-state actors commit such terrible atrocities as that in Beslan. We need to understand why they use certain tactics. And we need to change the political contexts in which these activities are legitimised. Just calling them all terrorists helps no one.”

On 9th September, the Irish Times, to my surprise, printed my response.

Madam, - Dominic Bryan of QUB's Institute of Irish Studies (September 7th) blathers that “we have to attempt to understand why non-state actors commit such terrible atrocities as that in Beslan. We need to understand why they use certain tactics...” Actually, we need to hunt down such non-state actors and kill them. No excuses.

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__________________

The following two posts are based on letters I wrote in response to articles which appeared in the subscription-only Irish Times (and elsewhere), but which the editor chose not to publish.
Not sufficiently anti-Bush, perhaps.
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Stupid Bush

Howell Raines, the prestigious New York Times' former editor, who was fired for protecting the plagiary of reporter Jayson Blair, has a problem with facts.

In a recent article in the Guardian (naturally!) and other newspapers, he repeats a variety of assertions about President Bush's mental abilities.

President George W Bush is

	of low IQ,
	stupid,
	a village idiot,
	thick,
	dumb,
	not smart enough,
	of questionable mental capacity,
	of questionable imagination,
	intellectually weak.

He asks, “Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure their SATs and college exam papers would put Kerry far ahead”. But if he had any facts to back this up, you can be sure he would trumpet them. It's because he hasn't that he's spoofing.

So here are a few facts in the public domain.

	Mr Kerry was awarded a bachelor's degree by Yale 1966 shortly before he joined the US Navy.
	Two years later, so was Mr Bush.
	In 1976 he earned a law degree from Boston College (where?)
	But the previous year Mr Bush had earned an MBA from Harvard.

So Kerry is a double-bachelor graduate from Yale and Boston; Bush is a bachelor+masters graduate from Yale and Harvard. On this objective evidence, the score is Kerry 2-, Bush 2+.

So, Mr Raines, who's the dumb one?

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The Accidental Hero and the Swiftee Smears

In an article published in several newspapers, Professor David Gergen, erstwhile adviser to four US presidents, recently decried the anti-Kerry ads by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Andrew Sullivan, who has recently turned anti-Bush, also considers the ads an unworthy smear. They are just not cricket.

But such commentators would be more convincing if they were to address the actual issues raised by the disaffected Swiftees. John Kerry himself has not faced reporters in a serious interview since August 1st, apparently for fear of questions about these matters.

It's worth summarising in one place the main things in the public domain that he needs to clarify:

	Mr Kerry claimed before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 that thousands of US soldiers in Vietnam were war criminals; he subsequently included himself
	He claimed on the floor of the Senate in 1986 that he had spent Christmas 1968 under fire on a gunboat (illegally) inside Cambodia, which his campaign has now admitted was false
	In respect of Mr Kerry's wounds that earned him three purple hearts and an early exit from Vietnam, Senator Bob Dole recently remarked, “three Purple Hearts - he never bled that I know of ... they were all superficial wounds ... he never spent one day in the hospital”
	His campaign has effectively admitted that the first of his purple-heart wounds, which according to his doctor required only a band-aid, was self-inflicted albeit unintentionally
	For his silver star, there are, extraordinarily, three separate citations, signed by three different officers, over a 12-year period, with two very different accounts; moreover his website claims the medal includes a V for valour which it doesn't
	In 1971, he threw his medals away in an ostentatious anti-war protest, but in 1984 they mysteriously reappeared in his office
	In the early 1970s, as a leading anti-warrior and whilst still a US Navy officer, he consistently took the North Vietnamese negotiating positions, so much so that to this day he is honoured with a photograph in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), which shows him meeting the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Andrew Sullivan also considers it underhand that the Swiftees started preparing their case (and their book, “Unfit for Command”) well before Mr Kerry declared he was “reporting for duty” at the Democratic Convention. In fact, he embarked upon his Vietnam re-journey months ago during his primary campaign, which is when and why the Swiftees began preparing their case. Why, the issue was so well known that even I was commenting on Mr Kerry's “accidental heroics” back in February.

Unless the Accidental Hero can provide sensible answers or allow the release of his full military records, he will prove to have been most unwise to make his paltry four months service in Vietnam the centrepiece of his presidential campaign.