Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal

[Airbornelawyer]

Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, a documentary with interviews with former Vietnam POWs on the presidential candidacy of John Kerry, will be released tomorrow.

Sample clips can be seen here: http://www.stolenhonor.com/documentary/samples.asp
Main page: http://www.stolenhonor.com/

[Guy]

The length of time, these gentlemen have spent as "POWs" is incredible!

[brownapple]

Well, they are going to have a hard time arguing these gentlemen's credentials.

Kevin McManus
Silver Star
Legion of Merit
Bronze Star
DFC
Air Medal
Purple Heart
POW for 5 years, 8 months and 4 days

Leo K. Thorsness
Medal of Honor
Silver Star
6 DFCs
10 Air Medals
2 Purple Hearts
GCM
POW for 5 years, 19 days

Thomas S. Pyle
2 Silver Stars
3 Bronze Stars
2 Purple Hearts
Legion of Merit
Air Medal
MSM
POW for 6 years, 6 months and 26 days

Thomas J. Sterling
Silver Star
Legion of Merit
DFC
Bronze Star
2 Purple Hearts
2 Air Medals
AF Commendation Medal
POW for 5 years, 10 months and 15 days

Ralph E. Gaither
2 Silver Stars
2 Legions of Merit
DFC
4 Bronze Stars
6 Air Medals
2 Purple Hearts
POW for 7 years, 3 months and 23 days

Robinson Risner
2 Air Force Crosses
DSM
2 Silver Stars
3 DFCs
Bronze Star
8 Air Medals
POW for 7 years, 4 months and 27 days

James H. Warner
Silver Star
Legion of Merit
2 Bronze Stars
2 Purple Hearts
11 Air Medals
Navy Commendation Medal
POW for 5 years, 5 months and 1 day

Wonder if John Kerry will continue to tell us what a hero he is?

[The Reaper]

Wonder if they will get off the POTUS Guard Service long enough to mention it.

Been a real feeding frenzy today, hope it backfires.

TR

[Roguish Lawyer]

Been a real feeding frenzy today, hope it backfires.

I think it probably will. Kerry made his service an issue and "opened the door" to rebuttals. Bush did not.

[Razor]

I first read about the new "information" regarding the President's service yesterday morning on MSNBC.com. If I'm not mistaken, this was all stirred up by a Boston Globe investigation. Why do I feel that this new research is less than unbiased, and coincidentally timed for shortly after the convention?

[The Reaper]

The real question is among all of the Bush records digging, why has Kerry not signed the SF180, or been badgered about it?

I would also hope that the media uses the same terms and standards when referring to these ads by ACT and moveon.org. By that standard, Kerry is behind the ads, they are Kerry attack dogs, the persons speaking out are all liars part of a vast left wing conspiracy, and anyone on Kerry's staff who is affiliated with them should resign immediately.

TR

[DunbarFC]

I first read about the new "information" regarding the President's service yesterday morning on MSNBC.com. If I'm not mistaken, this was all stirred up by a Boston Globe investigation. Why do I feel that this new research is less than unbiased, and coincidentally timed for shortly after the convention?

The Globe is notoriously biased

My grandmother used to call it " The Communist Rag "

Also the timing alone should make their objectivity suspect

[Roguish Lawyer]

The real question is among all of the Bush records digging, why has Kerry not signed the SF180, or been badgered about it?

Sean Hannity was all over a Kerry advisor about it last night, and the guy said he thinks Kerry should sign it and would ask him to!

[Airbornelawyer]

I first read about the new "information" regarding the President's service yesterday morning on MSNBC.com. If I'm not mistaken, this was all stirred up by a Boston Globe investigation. Why do I feel that this new research is less than unbiased, and coincidentally timed for shortly after the convention?
Three "separate" attacks, though I doubt the mainstream media would bother to explore any connections.

1. Nicholas Kristof runs a New York Times column claiming a newly discovered person of unimpeachable character who never saw Bush in Alabama. Leaving aside the logical problem of disproving a negative, it turns out that the person in question (i) had made this same claim in February, so not newly discovered, and (ii) was appearing in ads for a MoveOn funded anti-Bush group that coincidently come out at the same time as Kristof's op-ed.

2. The Boston Globe (owned by the NY Times) runs its story. I admit I haven't followed this one so I don't know the details.

3. Dan Rather finally gets his 60 Minutes 2 segment on the former Texas official who claims to have gotten Bush into the Guard when the official was Speaker of the Texas House. When he first peddled the story, during a fraud investigation by state officials under then-Gov. Bush, he was Lt. Governor when he got Bush in. Then it turned out Bush was already in the Guard for a year when this guy became Lt. Governor. Oh, and no Bush family member interceded on W's behalf; it was a family friend, conveniently dead. Oh, and CBS did throw a bone to objectivity by noting that the former official had contributed some money to Kerry in the past. It was about $500,000; he is a Kerry campaign co-chair in Texas; and he is a lobbyist who stands to gain power if Kerry wins (Sen. Daschle once described him as the "51st Democratic Senator").

[DunbarFC]

2. The Boston Globe (owned by the NY Times) runs its story. I admit I haven't followed this one so I don't know the details.




The Boston Globe has a whole section on this on their online www.boston.com site

The link is here - http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/bush/national_guard/

Note that they did the same type of story in May of 2000. The story was then dropped until this month

Every four years. A pattern......? Seems to be.........

Also note the "echoes of Vietnam" chart at the bottom of the linked page

[rubberneck]

Wonder if they will get off the POTUS Guard Service long enough to mention it.

Been a real feeding frenzy today, hope it backfires.

TR

Looks like it is already starting to backfire.

'60 Minutes' Documents on Bush Might Be Fake
By Robert B. Bluey
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
September 09, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - The 32-year-old documents produced Wednesday by the CBS News program "60 Minutes," shedding a negative light on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, may have been forged using a current word processing program, according to typography experts.

Three independent typography experts told CNSNews.com they were suspicious of the documents from 1972 and 1973 because they were typed using a proportional font, not common at that time, and they used a superscript font feature found in today's Microsoft Word program.

The "60 Minutes" segment included an interview with former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes, who criticized Bush's service. The news program also produced a series of memos that claim Bush refused to follow an order to undertake a medical examination.

The documents came from the "personal office file" of Bush's former squadron commander Jerry B. Killian, according to Kelli Edwards, a spokeswoman for "60 Minutes," who was quoted in Thursday's Washington Post. Edwards declined to tell the Post how the news program obtained the documents.

But the experts interviewed by CNSNews.com honed in on several aspects of a May 4, 1972, memo, which was part of the "60 Minutes" segment and was posted on the CBS News website Thursday.

"It was highly out of the ordinary for an organization, even the Air Force, to have proportional-spaced fonts for someone to work with," said Allan Haley, director of words and letters at Agfa Monotype in Wilmington, Mass. "I'm suspect in that I did work for the U.S. Army as late as the late 1980s and early 1990s and the Army was still using [fixed-pitch typeface] Courier."

The typography experts couldn't pinpoint the exact font used in the documents. They also couldn't definitively conclude that the documents were either forged using a current computer program or were the work of a high-end typewriter or word processor in the early 1970s.

But the use of the superscript "th" in one document - "111th F.L.S" - gave each expert pause. They said that is an automatic feature found in current versions of Microsoft Word, and it's not something that was even possible more than 30 years ago.

"That would not be possible on a typewriter or even a word processor at that time," said John Collins, vice president and chief technology officer at Bitstream Inc., the parent of MyFonts.com.

"It is a very surprising thing to see a letter with that date [May 4, 1972] on it," and featuring such typography, Collins added. "There's no question that that is surprising. Does that force you to conclude that it's a fake? No. But it certainly raises the eyebrows."

Fred Showker, who teaches typography and introduction to digital graphics at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., questioned the documents' letterhead.

"Let's assume for a minute that it's authentic," Showker said. "But would they not have used some form of letterhead? Or has this letterhead been intentionally cut off? Notice how close to the top of the page it is."

He also pointed to the signature of Killian, the purported author of the May 4, 1972, memo ordering Bush, who was at the time a first lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, to obtain a physical exam.

"Do you think he would have stopped that 'K' nice and cleanly, right there before it ran into the typewriter 'Jerry," Showker asked. "You can't stop a ballpoint pen with a nice square ending like that ... The end of that 'K' should be round ... it looks like you took a pair of snips and cut it off so you could see the 'Jerry.'"

The experts also raised questions about the military's typewriter technology three decades ago. Collins said word processors that could produce proportional-sized fonts cost upwards of $20,000 at the time.

"I'm not real sure that you would have that kind of sophistication in the office of a flight inspector in the United States government," Showker said.

"The only thing it could be, possibly, is an IBM golf ball typewriter, which came out around the early to middle 1970s," Haley said. "Those did have proportional fonts on them. But they weren't widely used."

But Haley added that the use of the superscript "th" cast doubt on the use of any typewriter.

"There weren't any typewriters that did that. That looks like it might be a function of something like Microsoft Word, which does that automatically."

[Airbornelawyer]

When I was in OCS in 1994, we still had crappy 286s. That was an active duty army unit. So even if a "high-end typewriter or word processor" capable of producing the documents was available, what are the odds this ANG unit or this LT had them?

For all you FOGs out there, here are the documents. Do these look like any military memo you ever saw in the early 1970s?

[Roguish Lawyer]

When I was in OCS in 1994, we still had crappy 286s. That was an active duty army unit. So even if a "high-end typewriter or word processor" capable of producing the documents was available, what are the odds this ANG unit or this LT had them?

For all you FOGs out there, here are the documents. Do these look like any military memo you ever saw in the early 1970s?

OMG, that is hysterical! Of course, the press won't report the fraud. At least not the way they would if this was done by Bush supporters. :mad:

[brownapple]

I see a number of problems with them from my own experience/perspective:

One: I don't remember ever seeing a "memo to file". Ever.

Two: Even in the reserves we used military dating on correspondence.

I can't for the life of me figure out how the superscript would have been created (in C/2/11th, we were using electric typewriters until getting a 286 around '85).

[DunbarFC]

When I was in OCS in 1994, we still had crappy 286s. That was an active duty army unit. So even if a "high-end typewriter or word processor" capable of producing the documents was available, what are the odds this ANG unit or this LT had them?

For all you FOGs out there, here are the documents. Do these look like any military memo you ever saw in the early 1970s?

Isn't WORD helpful ??

[rubberneck]

More fuel for the fire. I guess everyone but CBS news can see this for what it is. A web blogger took the document and re-typed it using the default setting for word and then superimposed the two. They are identical in every respect. I hope the attached link works.

[Radar Rider]

The link works perfectly. The memos are exactly the same. Still waiting for CBS to fess up.