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Commentary: Truth in Typing
The Republicans claim the documents are fakes,
but an old typewriter shows it is the Republicans
who are not telling the truth.
By Frederick Sweet
The GOP is now claiming that Lt. George W. Bush�s
Texas Air National Guard supervisor, Colonel
Jerry Killian, could not have typed superscripts
with his 1970s typewriter in his memos about his
troubles with AWOL George. The Republicans claim
that the Colonel�s letter had to be written on a
computer because of the superscript such as the
th in �147th Fighter Wing.� Really?
On a mission, I found my ancient doctoral
dissertation (University of Alberta--Ph.D.,
1968), a 285-page scientific thesis that is in
fact riddled with superscripts and subscripts. My
dissertation had been typed in 1967 on an IBM
Selectric II typewriter. I checked my
dissertation just to make sure about the
superscripts.
I remember that this innovative IBM typewriter
was a big deal in 1966-68 because of its
incredible speed, and because it had a very black
one-time use carbon ribbon for typing and a
second smaller ribbon for correction. The IBM
Selectric II also had a lever above the right
platen knob that allowed the platen to be turned
freely and then returned exactly to the same
vertical line for inserting symbols, subscripts,
and superscripts.
This is why my ancient dissertation is full of
subscripts and superscripts common in chemistry.
It would have been a nightmare to type them
accurately without the IBM Selectric II.
The reason why I can recall this so well 46 years
later is that I had to hire two secretaries to
type up my dissertation and, therefore, I had to
rent a Selectric II from the IBM Company for the
second secretary, which almost broke me. This
brings me to the point that if this typewriter
was common enough for a lowly American graduate
student studying in Canada to rent one, certainly
Colonel Killian could have had one at an Air
National Guard base in Texas.
As a matter of fact, I happen to have a 1970s IBM
Selectric II in my basement, which I had
purchased in 1974. (This was just after AWOL
George was doing whatever he was doing when not
fulfilling his National Guard requirements.)
After my university converted to computer word
processing in the late 1980s-early 1990s, I
stored this IBM Selectric II in my basement
because I didn�t have the heart to discard it.
Now it comes in handy to prove another lie from
the Republican machine that is spewing lies all
over this campaign.
So there is no doubt about it. Colonel Killian�s
memos described on CBS�s �60 Minutes� could have
been typed on an IBM Selectric II. He could have
punched out the words saying that young Lt.
George Bush was falling well short of his
National Guard commitments. And there is no doubt
in my mind that once again the Republican
National Committee is spreading lies to
manufacture doubt in the public mind to defeat
John Kerry.
Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive
Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at
Washington University School of Medicine in St.
Louis. You can email your comments to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Posted Tuesday, September 14, 2004
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=881
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