Those don’t match… |
This is going to get ugly fast, real fast. CBS/60 Minutes recently aired a segment hosted by Dan Rather claiming that they had new documents showing that Bush’ service to the Texas Air National Guard was incomplete and unsatisfactory. Further, they claimed documentation from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian that further supported it. The sound you have been hearing for the last day or two today were people on the left blowing each other over how this was going to put a nail in Bush’s coffin. Other sources picked up the news.
Oops! This might suck!
Except it looks like at least some, if not all of the information is a forgery. I have all the relevant documents at the bottom of this entry, as well as a .doc file you too can use to reproduce the exact same memo’s at home (thanks LGF!)!
“I opened Microsoft Word, set the font to Microsoft’s Times New Roman, tabbed over to the default tab stop to enter the date “18 August 1973,” then typed the rest of the document purportedly from the personal records of the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian.
And my Microsoft Word version, typed in 2004, is an exact match for the documents trumpeted by CBS News as “authentic.” – quote in context
The web strikes!
There are lots of places to go for the whole story, you should start with powerline blog (see below for specific entry links) and little green footballs. You will notice that it took only from the first post I could find at 07:28 on 9/9 till around 22:32 on 9/9 for the first hint of a CBS freak out happened. What I think is awesome is how fast so much information came together. There is a lot of what they call [[wp:HUMINT]] (human intelligence) on the ‘net and it is starting to pay off. A [[wp:meme]] may spread fast, but counter memes also happen quickly.
Still cooler is that the ebb and play of the [[wp:buzz]] on the ‘net is itself a source of news and an indicator of what’s happening. Fox news did a segment on the forgery thing, tipped of mostly by the web traffic which they also discuss. You can see it at The Daily Recycler and I have a local mirror here as well.
Wait a minute, the aliens did it!
Now it gets even more amusing. With the deafening silence of “screw em” Kos, the guy who would normally be all over this stuff we are left to look elsewhere on the left for a tin-foil hat theory. How can they find a way to blame Bush for their idiocy? Oh wait, its all a plot! Look no further than Kos’s readership or other assorted ‘net spin doctors doing their best. Hell, even Metafilter has some people looking for a way out.
“Who, you might wonder, would orchestrate a hoax that could be so quickly identified as a hoax? Wouldn’t any Kerry supporter realize that they would be caught, and that their candidate would suffer the backlash? Of course they would. And that’s why I don’t think a Kerry supporter is involved.” – quote in context
Of course, they may have come from Kerry’s camp…
“More than a couple people heard about the papers,” says the DNC staffer. “I’ve heard that they ended up with the Kerry campaign, for them to decide to how to proceed, and presumably they were handed over to 60 Minutes, which used them the other night. But I know this much. When there was discussion here, there were doubts raised about their authenticity.” – quote in context
Make up your own mind
The documents in question are saved here so they don’t you know, disappear. You can also find them at the CBS news page they came from.
- Bush_Military_01.pdf – Memo from retired Lt. Col. Albert C. Lloyd on whether Mr. Bush satisfied Guard requirements
- Bush_Military_02.pdf – Personnel Card listing points Mr. Bush earned from May 1972 to May 1973
- Bush_Military_03.pdf – Service Record showing days Mr. Bush was credited with service from October 1972 to May 1973
- BushGuardaugust1.pdf – purported “memorandum for the record” Aug 1, 1972
- BushGuardaugust18.pdf – purported memo to file Aug 18, 1973
- BushGuardmay4.pdf – purported May 4, 1972 memorandum
- BushGuardmay19.pdf – purported May 19, 1972 memorandum
- 18-August-1973.doc – a WORD file that will re-create one of the memos.
Blogosphere
The powerline coverage in order earliest to latest:
- Power Line- The sixty-first minute
- Power Line- Experts Agree- 60 Minutes Perpetrated a Hoax
- Power Line- An Officer Weighs In
- Power Line- CBS’s House of Cards Collapses
- Power Line- Another Officer Speaks
- Power Line- Ben Barnes- Another Hoax-
- Power Line- Power Line Wins, CBS News Loses
- Power Line- CBS overboard
- Power Line- Hurricane Dan
The Little Green Footballs coverage in order in order earliest to latest:
- lgf- Bush Guard Documents- Forgeries-
- lgf- Bush Guard Documents- Forged
- lgf- Forged Documents- Topic Two
- lgf- Font Geek Bona Fides
- lgf- The 12-Hour Scandal
Allahpundit (he doesn’t title, they are in chronological order)
- Allah Is In The House-
- Allah Is In The House-
- Allah Is In The House-
- Allah Is In The House-
- Allah Is In The House-
- Allah Is In The House-
- Allah Is In The House-
Ace of Spades HQ
- Ace of Spades HQ- No, They Couldn’t Be That Stupid (Or Could They-)- Are CBS’s -AWOL- Docs -i-Forged–i–
- Ace of Spades HQ- The Forgeries (-)- Conspiring Coincidences or Enemy Action-
- Ace of Spades HQ- If This is True…
- Ace of Spades HQ- INDC’s Expert- At Least 90% Certain Docs are Forgeries
- Ace of Spades HQ- And Don’t Forget the Signatures
- Ace of Spades HQ- Dan Rather Retirement Watch
- Ace of Spades HQ- Forged Docs- Having Trouble Catching Up-
- Ace of Spades HQ- The Ace of Spades Forged-Documents Recap
- Ace of Spades HQ- Byron York on Brit Hume
- Ace of Spades HQ- The Smoking Gun
- Ace of Spades HQ- The Shot Heard Round the Blogosphere
- Ace of Spades HQ- Oh, Dear- -i-Another–i- Document Surfaces
- Ace of Spades HQ- It’s Not the Spacing So Much as the Kerning
- Ace of Spades HQ- Even AP Quotes an Expert Judging the Docs Forgeries
- Ace of Spades HQ- Top Ten -i-Other–i- Signs Dan Rather’s -Documents- Are Forged
- Ace of Spades HQ- All in 24 Hours- Freepers-Drudge-Bloggers-Alternate Media Consumers Lay Dan Rather Low
- Ace of Spades HQ- Shock- Forged Documents Came By Way of DNC-Kerry Campaign
spacetown
Other links of interest
- Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush (washingtonpost.com)
- Yahoo! News – Son of Late Officer Questions Bush Memos
- INDC Journal- UPDATED- -At Least- 90% Positive They’re Fake)–Are the CBS National Guard Documents Fake-
- The Command Post – 2004 US Presidential Election – Bush Memo Update
- Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush (washingtonpost.com)
- Ace of Spades HQ- Top Ten -i-Other–i- Signs Dan Rather’s -Documents- Are Forged
- The American Spectator – article about the documents history?