True Or False?

Holy Blogosphere Storm, Batman! Lots of big bloggers are in a whirlwind about the latest GWB service document release, showcased on CBS' 60 Minutes last night. Some think that a key part of it may be a forgery. (Sorry, Rusty).

Forgery?:

Powerline

Little Green Footballs (good luck getting on)

INDC Journal

Heroes From the Past

Kevin Drum

Read and tell me what you think.

I still haven’t made up my mind. What I’m wondering is this: was the document in question originally hand-written? That could allow for the document having a--shall we say--recent flavor to it. (I can’t see a commander typing up his own memo.) If so, surely there’s a scan of the original document somewhere, assuming that one exists, benefit of the doubt and all.

UPDATE:

The Infidel Cowboy

AllahPundit

UPDATE: One of LGF's commenters points to the date format of the document in question: 18 August 1973. That's not the standard military date format of the time. This is: 18 AUG 73. (Recently, standard military date format was changed to the following: 09092004, that is, day, month, year.)

UPDATE:

Donald Sensing

Comments

[joe]

The document produced w/ Word matches the one CBS found perfectly. This should be amusing.

[BloodSpite]

Blackfive, LT SMASH also have quick pieces on this as well as The Puppy Blender.

I compared the PDF files with my orders even in the 90's and I find differences left and right.

Some one has some explaining to do.

The question that worries me however is: How much of this actually *is* from the White House and how much isn't?

[Nick Larsen]

None of the documents in question originated from the White House. What'll bake you cookie is this; the White House had copies of some of those documents. CBS had faxed copies to the White House for comment. So, the White House might have known about the fake documents and let CBS run with them anyway,...... Poor Dan.

Just heard a caller named Juliette from Los Angeles call in to Hugh Hewitt's show make the same point you did in your update. Was it you?

[teal marie]

Forgery.
Ugh, I feel like I've been bin diving at Kevin Drum.

[baldilocks]

Yep! That was me. :-)

[Sonetka]

Juliette - I don't know much about the military and less about typewriters (though if I'd wanted to forge a document from thirty years ago I hope I'd use the sense God gave me and TYPE IT ON A PERIOD MACHINE) but that subject line of "CYA" looks ... off. Would anyone in any branch of the military seriously use that for a subject line? Granted, it might have been interpolated by a transcriber, but in that case the whole thing is still suspect until a handwritten original appears. Even in the graves of academe we were taught very seriously that one of the first commandments in transcribing is that Thou Shalt Never Monkey With The Text Without Indicating Exactly How Thou Hast Done So.

I was in my car during the evening news from NBC. I can get the local NBC TV station on 87.7 FM. They CYA'd the story with saying a website is saying it's a forgery. Sounds like they might be looking into it or at least don't want to be caught outright with a bad accusation. Course, they were talking about a CBS story so maybe they DID want to cast dowbt on it.

[Noble Eagle]

ABC news is reporting that Killian's son doubts the authenticity of some of the memos.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040909_1710.html

On a side note, I spoke with a woman at work who was trained as a secretary in the early 70s. She said that she had never used a typewriter that could do the superscripts like the ones in the memos.

[caltechgirl]

the evidence keeps mounting! FoxNews is reporting that there are questions as to the authenticity of the documents.

Glad to see that the MSM is actually NOT ignoring the b'sphere for a change (ABC anyway)

Also, and this point has been raised elsewhere, why would anyone keep a copy of a copy of a copy (15x or so, by the distortion) of a memo in their personal file?

[LB]

I need to go to bed before I get caught up in the storm! East coast time stinks...

[susan]

Hugh Hewitt has a whole bunch of stuff as well.

[David Blue]

Donald Sensing's roundup convinced me that this is an arrogant forgery by someone who didn't know much of either military matters or the past, who was contemptuous enough of military people to think that that wouldn't matter, and who had a very correct idea of what the mainstream media would accept, but who under-rated the power of the blogsphere to debunk such disinformation.

That adds up a lot like a mainstream media journalist. This could be fun. :)

[David Blue]

The signatures aren't even close.

I love the mainstream media! (laughing out loud)

Instapundit has a link to a cached site (the original is down due to traffic from Drudge) that has an interview with a CBS producer about how they got the documents (from the Kerry campaign) and how they had their own doubts about the authenticity but decided to run with it anyway.

This is very bad for both MSM and the Kerry campaign. Pandering and desperation aren't vote-getters!

[BeckyJ]

The previous comment was from me. Need more coffee....

[David Blue]

"The CBS producer said that some alarms bells went off last week when the signatures and initials of Killian on the documents in hand did not match up with other documents available on the public record, but producers chose to move ahead with the story. "This was too hot not to push. If there were doubts, those people didn't show it," says the producer, who works on a rival CBS News program."

(gloomy music, drifting fog, sinister chuckle)

"Heh heh heh! Stories that are damaging to George W. Bush are 'hot' whether they're true or not! Bwa-ha-ha!"

The Spectre of Scandal rises behind the simpleton president as he talks to his dumb hick supporters about the Golden Rule.

But - Gasp! (the spectre is overturned and the mask comes off!) Main Stream Media (MSM) bias is revealed!

And they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those darned blogs!

[Conrad]

Come on, Baldy. Show some guts. If there's not enough evidence by now for you to make a call, something's very, very wrong.

[teal marie]

I'm hearing noises that this same scrutiny is being applied to other docs in Rather's stash and finding the same flubs. Uh oh!
On the downside, all this discussion on all the blogs has told this forger and any future forgers exactly what mistakes to avoid. :-(
Upside: Dan Rather insisting he trusts his source kinda rules out Karl Rove.

[Born Free]

BOTH date formats may have been correct. As an Army ROTC cadet and junior Signal Officer, I did a lot of (involuntary) admin. I can remember reading about the date formatting standard, but I don't remember where or when. Prob'ly between '76-'79.

[David Blue]

Conrad, let grandma, also known as baldilocks, take her own sweet time. We've had quite enough of people stifling their doubts and rushing to judgment. She may be busy. And it doesn't make any difference. The bad guys are completely obviously guilty.

teal marie, that's right: future forgers and big media manipulators will learn from this, and they may do a better job in future.

But look at it the other way round. People like this have been lying to us all our lives. Who knows how much modern history is fake, stuff the big media just got away with? CBS lies. AP lies, as shown by the bogus boos. The BBC lies, as shown by a mountain of deceit revealed by the Hutton Report. And so on. Re-read everything that you think you know, minus the stuff from tainted sources: BBC, AP, Reuters, etc.. Not much left, right?

But not this time, not today. Leave the evils of tomorrow for tomorrow to take care of, and smile. Today is a good day!

[David Blue]

Though on reflection, this is also a day of the most solemn memory. (bonks self on head)

I'll turn off the laughter track now, see you guys another day.

[teal marie]

Very true, David Blue, it's a real good day when the truth gets its pants on. I'm pleased, too.
And I wanted to say to you, that I am sorry this forgery took everybody's attention away from the embassy bombing. I quite forgot it myself, until late last night. I'm very sorry. The Australians are our treasured allies. Please accept my condolences on this cruel act.

[teal marie]

David Blue, its still the 10th in America, even on the East Coast, no worries ;-)

[baldilocks]

Conrad: Cop me some slack, Jack. I've been gone all day.

[David Blue]

REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 10

Hi.

There's something I want to say about September 10 and September 11, and there's nowhere to say it, so I thought I'd stick it here, off-topic. I hope Baldilocks will cut me some slack on that. If not, I'll accept my bonk on the head in good part.

I have a slightly different take on what September 10, 11 and 12 mean, and from my point of view I would like us to stay at September 10 forever.

Americans have settled on September 10 as meaning a day and a state of innocent (or negligent) ignorance, a blank when there is no sense of danger, and it looks like things will stay that way forever. September 11 is the impact: fire and thunder from a cloudless blue sky. And on September 12, the shock of the impact, so huge, so brutal, is finally registering, and people wake up in a different world.

To me, September 10, 2001 was a special day because it was the 50th anniversary of ANZUS, renewed in America by Prime Minister John Winston Howard and American President George W. Bush.

50 years, that's a lot. And ANZUS is a big deal for Australia. It's effectively our national insurance policy. The words of ANZUS are almost meaningless - the document doesn't commit either party to much of anything. What matters is the spirit behind the words, which is, mutually: "Stand by me. Yes, we stand together." So on 10 September, we confirmed the story we had told for 50 years, which in essence was: "Don't worry about a thing mate, you can count on us." But what really mattered was us counting on the Americans, because the idea that the Americans would need help, even token military forces and diplomatic support, was unimaginable. The Americans were like a global Superman: invulnerable.

And of course this was the same story that America's other allies were committed to, from the United Kingdom to Germany - and as long as it remained just a matter of words (when would America need help? Impossible!) the stories stayed the same, and all allies were equal.

Les than 24 hours later, bright and early in the morning, the global Superman got shot, and all the bills that would never come due came due.

Which raised a simple question for every alleged ally. Everything we said yesterday, is that true? Do we still stand where we stood on September 10? Or do we start shuffling and sidling and nuancing our way to a new position reflecting a new reality: that mutual commitments are well, constraining, entangling, dangerous. If you stand by what you said when it seemed safe and like all the benefit would be one-sided, now that it might not be like that - who can say where this is going and what the cost might be? But on the other hand, if you don't stand up for your mates, ultimately you're nothing and nobody.

So I was hoping passionately, you know: "Just stand, John!" Just say exactly what you said yesterday, September 10. Back it up with action, stick to it. September 10 is good.

He stuck. And in retrospect, there was never a shadow of a reasonable doubt that John Howard would come good. Maybe it helped that he was in America at the time and so he understood what the Americans were going through. But I doubt it. I just don’t think he's the quitting type. He's a better man than I realised.

And so we, along with Tony Blair's Britain and a bunch of other countries - we still have honour, we still can say that we stand by our mates, we still know who we are. If anything, our alliances are even stronger now, because they've been tested and they have proved sound. And in the end it cost us nothing, because the enemy wants us all dead regardless of whether we are allied with America or not, just for being the kind of people we are.*

As for those who moved on from these rather antique promises and commitments as soon as it looked as though they might have costs as well as benefits - to those who were fast friends of our friends as long as danger seemed unimaginable, but who started adjusting your stories when blood was shed and the war-trumpets sounded, and who have shuffled and slid further way ever since then: I spit on you all. Go to your new friends, the fanatics and dictators of Islam and the Arab world, and convince them if you can that the Americans could not trust you, but they can. Good luck, and goodbye.

September 10 is good. I hope our leaders meet again on September 10 in another half-century, and celebrate a hundred years of ANZUS, still honoured both in letter and in spirit. Never a worry or a doubt. We can count on you.* You can count on us.

* Yeah, Baldilocks, you're officially white in this context. Sorry, I don't set the rules for Jemaah Islamiah.

* Especially people like you, teal marie. And all present company, great company to be in!

And teal marie: thanks. And good for you all, always.

[quasimod]

NEWS FLASH!!!!

CBS has just announced a merger with Weekly World News!

Dan Rather is sacked, to be replaced by Bat Boy!

Tomorrows lead story:

"I was Bigfoots' love slave! (And now I'm pregnant with his baby)"

[David Blue]

On the embassy bombing ... even though it's from the dreaded Guardian, this looks about right to me.

But, I think a lot of Australians, and this is true of me, feel: this is wartime. Like your President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said: "We are now in this war. We are all in it. All the way." (This is very divisive. As in America, a lot of people feel the opposite. But this is what I and many others feel.) And the Americans are bleeding in Iraq. And we are going to be hit. So be it. We just have to win.

The chance that this is going to hurt Howard with his supporters is ... minimal. Two chances, slim and none.

And as for this sort of stuff: "... the first time a specifically Australian target had been deliberately singled out in a calculated attack, as one gloomy commentator concluded, on "a country widely identified in Indonesia as a major US ally in a war that is deeply despised"." All I think is: I love you Al Qaeda allies too.

You know, it's them or us, goodwill in no longer an issue. And they were planning to hit us at the Sydney 2000 Olympics (from which Baldilocks gets her sprinters-with-American-flag photo), before any of the present excuses for their malice were issues. So, they'll do their worst, regardless, and we'll do our best. That's all.

[teal marie]

David Blue, its strangely comforting that Australia has Mark Latham sounding very much like Kerry. It's also nice of you all to hold your elections a month before we do so we can take heart when Howard is re-elected!
Thank you for the heartfelt tribute, means a lot. I'll be flying my flag with a black ribbon tomorrow. Today I'll celebrate our innocence.

[baldilocks]

David B: As one of the cogs in the wheel that protected Germany from the late Soviet Union, I find their disloyalty most especially appalling.

Thank you for that post. And God bless you, your PM and your country.

Jakarta: a post is forthcoming.

[StinKerr]

Thanks for that post, David. I have copied it to a text file. I have a feeling it will come in handy. Even if it doesn't I'll always have it to review and feel good.

It's good to know that when times get tough we can look around to see who's willing to stick their heads above the parapet and see our Australian friends there. Absences are quetly noted.

[David Blue]

Thanks for what you said, baldilocks and StinKerr. Glad to have said something that worked for you.

[David Blue]

And now, a postscript on the bad guys wanting to kill us just because of who we are:

As noted above, according to Ali Imron the Bali bomb-maker, who'd be in as good a position as anyone to explain the motives of Jemaah Islamiah killers: "Australians, Americans, whatever - they are all white people".
Hence presumably they should be killed.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/11/1052591674275.html?oneclick=true

But in Iraq: Black soldiers are a particular target. 'To have Negroes occupying us is a particular humiliation,' Abu Mujahed said, echoing the profound racism prevalent in much of the Middle East. 'Sometimes we aborted a mission because there were no Negroes.'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1302639,00.html

So there's no clear agreement among Islamist killers on whether American Negroes are white or black or of a different race than their neighbours or the same race as their neighbours. There is however a consensus that whichever it is, they ought to be killed specifically on account of their race.

It just never seems to let up.

Baldilocks, I know you never play the race card, and it's one of the things I like about you, but I'm curious: do you ever get nigh-homicidally tired of all this pointless malice? Because I would.

In any case, whether people who think like this find our policies, our allies or anything else offensive shouldn't be a consideration.