TOPIC: Bush Document Forgery Is RATHER Obvious! [LONG]
The Tech Central Station article first caught my eye. As I left that page, with my mouth hanging open, I moved over to the Little Green Footballs blog to find out what all the fury was about. The next stop was TheCorner, a blog from the National Review Online. In between, I visited CBS News, the DrudgeReport, INDC Journal (offers a real expert's analysis) and a few other sites. The first statement that comes to mind is: Are you kidding me?!? This can't be happening in America!

In a country of netizens savvy to the ways of the press... in a country where so many people make their living by deceiving others... in a country where so much of the MSM is liberal (damn the truth)... this *IS* happening in America! What is happening?

Byron York wrote, in his piece, "On Wednesday, CBS News released four previously undisclosed documents which it said were written by Killian, who died in 1984. One of them, dated August 18, 1973, refers to Killian's reluctance to evaluate Bush's performance. Suggesting that top Texas Air National Guard officers were putting pressure on him to 'sugar coat' Bush's performance rating, Killian wrote, 'Bush wasn't here during rating period and I don't have any feedback from 187th in Alabama. I will not rate.'
But as the first document suggests, months before, Killian — and Harris — had quite decisively declined to rate Bush's performance. If Killian was under pressure to 'sugar coat' Bush's performance, he had certainly not yielded to it. Nor had anyone else 'sugar coated' the Bush evaluation."
Marjorie Connell, Killian's widow, and Gary Killian, the Lt. Colonel's son, have both cast doubt on the authenticity of the documents.

But the first stone was apparently cast by Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs (LGF). Charles looked at the CBS documents and found something very interesting about them -- they looked the same typed in MS Word. Not close, not similar, but almost 100% identical. Yet the memo was reportedly typed 32 years ago -- on a typewriter. Even more interesting when you consider that there is virtually no way a Lt Col in the ANG would have had a first generation word processor in 1972. In fact, LGF's bloggers have noted many problems with the document as it relates to technology of the time and military protocol.

Here are several examples:
33, 50, 98, 128, 132, 145, 149, 152, 159, 160, 169, 178, 246 / 268 (aside from the idiotic use of 4-ltr words, good points here), 299, 315, 331, 389, 433, 439 and 444 are all good information. *IF* you decide not to read the entire 465+ comments, you can get the gist of the story reading just those posts. A couple of the most damaging posts are: 166 (along with associated link to Selectric.org), 431/452, 450 (which names Martin Heldt as a possible conspirator) FWIW, a couple of good rebuttal comments are: 99 and 462. The award for totalling missing the point (purposely??) goes to boingboing.net who turned the story around completely.

If you don't think this is big news take note: CNS, the AP, CNN, NBC, FOX and several other news agencies have all weighed in -- most on the liberal side.

NRO White House correspondent, Byron York, also reports: "Beyond that, surviving relatives of Bush's then commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the author of the purported documents, insist they are fake. They say Killian always believed Bush was an excellent pilot and that he never wrote these documents. Killian died in 1984."

OTOH, CBS' Dan Rather says, "The story is true. The story is true... The questions raised in the story are serious and legitimate questions." Rather denies there is any internal CBS News investigation under way -- a statement backed by the network. Furthermore, "Rather also said the possibility of issuing any kind of recant or apology was 'not even discussed. Nor should it be.'" So much for journalistic integrity. Looks like pride is at the top of Dan Rather's list - Damn the truth.