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Richard, what I said was simple. You were blaming the wrong party.
Whether Mr. Stevens, Jr. understands what anamorphic transfers are or
are not was never my point - I have no way of knowing whether he really
understands it or not, just as I have no way of knowing whether Leon
Vitale and Jan Harlan understand it re Barry Lyndon and Clockwork
Orange. They simply made their decisions and Warners was stuck with
abiding it. I do wish Giant were anamorphic like the Canadian DVD, but
Mr. Stevens, Jr. wished otherwise and he controls the film. Do check
out the interview that Joshua Zyber linked to in one of his posts in
this thread - Mr. Stevens, Jr. talks quite a bit about his reasoning.

I've already addressed the 1:66 issue in terms of Warners' transfers.
Films aren't shown in that ratio in this country and with really odd
exceptions never have been. Widescreen in the US has always been 1:85
or scope, and only one or two of Warners earliest transfers escaped
non-anamorphic (Virginia Woolf and Baby Jane being two of them), along
with the non-anamophic and scope The Wild Bunch.