Untorn "Torn Document" Available: Trick or Treat?

Calpundit: ARF!

The actual untorn 72-73 SPE is available for viewing now. The actual dates conform to the choices that Gryn, a commenter here and other websites, made. I explored that possibility in my post below: Is There A Missing 72-73 SPE?

My initial reconstruction of the 72-73 was wrong in three lines. The first two lines were mistaken, because they followed the assertion of Dan Bartlett that the first line was November - which could only make the second line December. The commenter Gryn was then correct to identify the first month as October, opening up the second month to be November, for indeed they were.

I also picked February as the month on line five, because I found it too incredible to believe that Bush could have attended drills a mere three weeks before his superior officers would sign a performance evaluation that claimed Bush hadn't been observed at the unit for a year. Evidently, this is the case.

The actual data for the 72-73 SPE, then, is as follows:

1 72 OCT 28 - 72 OCT 29 2 004 (Sat - Sun)
2 72 NOV 10 - 72 NOV 14 2 008 (Thu - Sun)
3 73 JAN 04 - 73 JAN 06 2 006 (Thu - Sat)
4 73 JAN 08 - 73 JAN 10 2 006 (Mon - Wed)
5 73 APR 07 - 73 APR 08 2 004 (Sat - Sun)
6 73 MAY 01 - 73 MAY 03 1 003 (Tue - Thu)
7 73 MAY 08 - 73 MAY 10 1 003 (Tue - Thu)
8 73 MAY 19 - 73 MAY 20 2 004 (Sat - Sun)
9 73 MAY 22 - 73 MAY 24 1 003 (Tue - Thu)

Again I emphasize the contradictions of this document with other documentation. Since Bush was not observed at the Houston unit by his superiors on the service dates listed on lines 1-5, where did this service take place? Since the unit code listed on the upper right corner shows Bush's unit number, it would seem all of this service happened in Houston. But how could it have?

If this document does contain Alabama service dates (presumably lines one and two), then Bush skipped out on the dates he was ordered to attend in Alabama when he was given permission to drill in Montgomery. If this document contains the Alabama data, then Bush skipped drill work from the middle of April to the end of October: six and a half months.

If the document doesn't contain Alabama data, then Bush had to have returned to Houston on Hallowe'en weekend to attend Guard drills. Why hasn't he ever claimed to do this? That sounds like something unforgetable - he'd been in Alabama for over six months, separated from his friends, and he must have had a pocketful of cash from the $900 a month he was getting from the Blount campaign.

Furthermore, why did he allow his campaign staff to release false information about this document? Dan Bartlett claimed to Jo Thomas that the first date on the torn document was November 29, and that the service was in Alabama. But that date wasn't in November - it was in October.

Can we put that down to misinterpreting the document? As the Jo Thomas article claims, the month I guessed as February was actually April. So Dan was right about April, but wrong about November. How could Dan have known that the fifth line was April at all? Either he was looking at the untorn copy, or Bush told him. If he was looking at the untorn copy, then Dan Bartlett lied to Jo Thomas about the torn copy. But if Bartlett got his information from Bush, then Bush told him wrong about November, and nothing at all about the October date.

Where was Lt. Bush on Hallowe'en? Why was a torn document given out twice, when an untorn document was available? Was the defacement of this document meant to obscure a trip back to Houston - a trip Bush would prefer to forget?