Depends on what it is about. Again using my Dad's old military papers as a reference: Almost all of them used name and rank, but there was one which was a transcript of a military inquiry held because an officer who had been a friend of my Dad's had been messing around with a German luger which the officer thought was unloaded and had ended up shooting himself in the hand (what a dummy!). My Dad had been present when this incident occurred and several times the document just referred to him as "Wilson" when talking about his statements.

Equipment records
 

Although they were probably destroyed eons ago, equipment records of what was in the admin. offices at TXANG would be the definative way to account for this controversy. From those we could easily tell what's up. Most office equipment was always tagged even back in the early seventies, and even in units like the TXANG, for simple accounting purposes. If we could find out what they were using then, and then ascertain the specifications of that particular model, then there would be some way of finding out exactly what the authenticity of those documents are. Aside from that the debate will continue to rage, personally I think it's falling into minutia. It makes me sick to believe that people can't just except that those Nat. Guard positions were highly coveted and were frequently, if not always given to the priveleged, ie. George Bush. If the documents are forgeries, which they very well may be, it really makes no difference to me, I know why George Bush was there, I don't need a smoking gun document, or Lt. Governor to tell me.

- Walrus

No offense intended here, but FOX is hardly a paragon of journalistic objectivity.

I've been using typewriters and computers since the 1970s. Up until the late 80s, everything I used outputted either to a dot matrix printer, or to an impact printer of some type, the later ones using a daisy wheel or daisy thimble. None of these had superscripted "th's". There were some Macs at the company I worked for in the late 80s that did have Microsoft Word and PageMaker that outputted to a laser printer, but that was the first time I had access to that kind of printing. IBM Selectric II Ball typewriters did not have a times roman type font, as I recall. You pretty much had two choices, Courier and Letter Gothic, with the Letter Gothic being a more common ball used on the IBM Typewriters. There was ONE proportional spacing typewriter I used, with a standard bar-style keyset which was a colossal pain in the ass to use, because you had to remember how many backspaces to use for an M-Space, or an N-Space, and oh yea, "i" and "." had their own sizing as well. Superscripting was handled on this beast in the "old fashioned" way ... rolling the platen up half-a-line to hand type in the numbers. The secretaries hated this thing, and so I ended up using it as it had been dumped into my office. You get the hang of it after a while.

I await the independent documents review.

Walrus, you are absolutely right. I LIVED through those times. I knew the guy sitting on either side of me in my classes stood a good chance of getting drafted and sent to 'Nam once his college deferment was over. A person couldn't get into the National Guard for love or money back in those days. It was an easy out from the draft, available to only a priviledged few. The rest of the young men of my generation had three choices: except the draft, go to jail, or go to Canada.

Bottom line, Bush took the rich boy's out. He didn't have the guts to serve in the military proper and risk being sent to war. If he didn't want to go to war, he should at least have had the courage to make his feelings public and join the protesters in the streets. He did neither. The man is a coward in my book, and a few details of his National Guard service either way don't make up for the fact that he used the Guard to shirk any responsibility and stand up for what he believed in on one side or the other. I respect BOTH the young men who protested in the streets and the young men who went to war more than I respect Bush.

But here's another reason why it's hard to digest. If you asked Kerry whether, knowing what he knows now, he would still sign up and go to Vietnam, he should say NO given his final belief that it was unjust and unnecessary. Therefore, avoiding the war was not only the cowardly thing to do but, in the end, according to Kerry's standards, the moral thing to do.

It remains impossible to understand how an entire Republican party is now left defending draft dodging and an entire Democratic party is celebrating volunteering for Vietnam. You would have thought it against their DNA.

At least Kerry had the guts to go and find out. I still consider "dodging the draft" to have been the moral response to the Vietnam War. Hiding out, however, was not a very couragous or responsible response. If one is unwilling to participate in the military when his country is going through a time of war, than that person should speak out and act to help effect change. Hiding under a rock when your country is in crisis as the US was during the Vietnam era is not the action one would expect of a future leader of our nation.

Viet Nam era, XXX was in the guard, somebody pulled strings, end of story.
That happens to be Bush's story too. I don't need any documents to know he wouldn't have been in the guard without pull. This is a non-issue for me. :confused:

If XXX is Joe, the Accountant, whose father knew someone who knew someone, yeah, so what? Joe's actions during that era are between him and his conscience. But if XXX becomes the leader of the United States and orders young men off to fight in a war that, once again, many Americans question whether we should be fighting, that's very different. For me, anyhow, it puts Bush's integrity as a leader into serious question. "You guys go do what I didn't have the guts to do myself." A good leader leads by example, and Bush's example is piss poor.

I keep having this recurring dream where Jenna and Laura are asking me to put on my shades, and what's in the secret sauce

I gotta go with Marichiko on that one.. my father dodged the draft.. I wanted to join the military.. (heh bad feet they wouldn't have me :)) ) although there has been some talk about re-instating the draft... in 'the war on terrorism' a conventional ground force can't win it... we all know that.

Don't forget the war Bush was avoiding was morally wrong, while the Bush crusade is Gods will. ;)

Guts don't have much to do with it.

Kerry signed up for the Naval Reserves, which ordinarily would have kept him out of Vietnam. He spent his first year of service on a boat off the coast of California. Getting activated to go to Vietnam appears to have come as a bit of a surprise ...

He spent four months of a one year tour IN Vietnam.

What did you think of Clinton, then?

Military service became a "nonissue" for his campaign, and is apparently the ONLY issue for this one.

Kerry the anti-war protestor has positioned himself as Kerry the War Hero for the purpose of campaigning. Apparently this has been a tactic of his for as long as he's been running.

Frankly, I think it's stupid.

This election is not about the Vietnam War, but that war is one hell of a lot of smoke and mirrors that's keeping a much of the electorate from looking at the issues.

I keep having this recurring dream where Jenna and Laura are asking me to put on my shades, and what's in the secret sauce

Surely you mean Jenna and Barbara, NBN? Laura is their mother.