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Rich Galen Wednesday September 15, 2004
THE FALL SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE IS STILL ON!!
The Fall Subscription drive is underway. If you were due to renew last February, but couldn't because of my six-month hitch with the Department of Defense - the required extension has expired and you are free to re-subscribe!
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Other than Dan "What's the Frequency, Kenneth" Rather, no one on the planet now believes that the documents proffered by CBS News about Lt. George W. Bush's service in the Air National Guard are legitimate.
Dear Mr. Mullings:
We would appreciate your being a bit more precise in your writing. When you write "on the planet" do you mean on THIS planet or the planet more normally occupied by Mr. Rather - and we think you know which planet we mean.
Signed,
The Seventh Planet from the Sun Society
Because of their zeal to do serious damage - perhaps fatal damage - to the campaign of President Bush, the network of Edward R. Morrow and Walter Cronkite, went on the air having shown the memos to the Barrista at the local Starbucks AND (just to make extra certain they were on solid ground) double-checked them with the guy who sells pretzels in the summer and chestnuts in the winter over on West 57th.
Everyone else who has ever examined documents for a living seems to be pretty clear that these memos have all the authenticity of Monopoly money - after having been washed through a Xerox machine eight or ten times.
This is another wonderful example of the Law of Unintended Consequences rearing its well-recognized head. Instead of damaging the Bush campaign, CBS News has successfully knocked the campaign of Senator John Kerry off its message since last Friday.
And, because at some point CBS is going to have to admit these documents are forgeries, the discussion will then shift to who prepared them, how they found their way to CBS and how they got on the air.
CBS will claim some bogus "protection-of-sources" privilege which does not actually exist in law but only in custom. No one outside of CBS will be willing to argue that someone who provided forged documents should be protected under any circumstances.
Let us, for a moment, discuss the possibility that sometime in the early 1970's a National Guard unit had available to it the latest and greatest in IBM electric typewriters - which would have been necessary for these documents to be legit.
As recently as this past April, I saw the lack of up-to-date equipment which National Guard and Reserve units brought with them to Iraq. This is not a new state of affairs.
As regular readers know, I was in the Army National Guard from 1967 - 1973. About half of that in the New Jersey National Guard (an armor division - tanks) and half in the Ohio National Guard (anti-aircraft battery).
When I enlisted, the active-duty army was beginning to be issued M-16 rifles. Know what my unit had? M-1 rifles. The very same rifles used in World War II. Probably the VERY rifles used in WW II.
Furthermore, I was trained as a supply room clerk and unit armorer. At Ft. Lee, Virginia I learned how to build boxes for shipping, how to fix guns (from .38 caliber pistols to 50 caliber machine guns), and I learned to type. Thirty words per minute, as I remember, scored 100%.
On a manual typewriter.
It is possible that by 1972 electric typewriters had found their way onto the desks of company clerks across this great nation of ours. I just don't remember any more. But it is way, WAY unlikely that any Reserve or Guard unit - short of a unit specifically dealing with production of written materials - would have access to anything more than the most basic of typewriting equipment.
Meanwhile, back on the campaign trail, yesterday's piece by Tom Raum of the Associated Press, demonstrated what the problems facing the Kerry campaign really are:
"President Bush has been solidifying his gains in states that once were dead heats, forcing both parties' campaigns to alter strategies as the electoral battleground shrinks. Democrat John Kerry is struggling to stay afloat in some hotly contested states, including Missouri, Wisconsin and Ohio, where polls show Bush pulling ahead."
And that's no forgery.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: That "What's the Frequency�" business, an unbelievably boring lesson on typewriters and keyboards and, if you've missed Al Gore, you'll want to see today's Catchy Caption of the Day.
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Copyright © 2004 Richard A. Galen
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