Rather's memos
I won't say "Rather-gate," even with a change in font, because I think the "-gate" business has gone completely crazy.
I don't really have anything to contribute about the CBS memos, except to say that the whole episode ends up being a real tribute to the bloggers, and absolutely hilarious.
I guess it's a bit like engineers watching the fires in the WTC on 9/11, and not thinking about the buildings collapsing until it actually happens. Once someone made the observation that the famous memos looked they were word processed by a computer and software that did not exist in the 70s, it seemed blindingly obvious to a lot of people.
The memos' defenders fought back--a lot of the controversial features, if not all, could be produced on a specific IBM typewriter of the day. But only with a lot of hard work; and the machine was rare, heavy, and expensive (not your standard Selectric); and there is no evidence that such a machine was available to Killian. To date, apparently, no one has succeeded in generating a document that looks like the questionable memos using an old machine; hundreds or thousands of people have done so using Microsoft Word and default settings.
Now the Washington Post presents a detailed comparison of the (pretty clearly fake) memos, and actual memos produced in the office that allegedly produced the fake ones. (Via Instapundit; also viewable on Drudge). The office in question used an ordinary typewriter, not a rare and expensive one; there are mistakes in the fake memos in formatting, in some of the facts of Bush's career, and in military lingo.
I watched McLaughlin today for the first time in months, and I'm pretty sure there was more shouting about this than anything else.
"Fake, but Accurate"? The only allegation these memos ever promised to add to the story of Bush's National Guard service was that he violated a direct order in not going for his physical. Now Killian's secretary says the memos, while they were not produced in their present form by her, or in Killian's office in her time, accurately convey Killian's thoughts. She's in her 80's, and she was a secretary. Is she sure that Bush violated a direct order in not going for his physical?
In any case, imagine how Rather would want to run with this if someone else had been caught cheating: someone has deliberately fabricated memos, purporting to be official memos from the National Guard concerning Bush, in a deliberate attempt to contribute to the sense that Bush's service was dishonourable. Surely the biggest question is: who is/are the person or people behind the memos?
Is Rather even computer literate? Does he do his own e-mails? I gather that Clinton, for example, does not.
The whole thing has a tit-for-tit quality: we have recently gone through Kerry's Vietnam record in more detail than ever before; now it's Bush's turn. With Kerry's record we are wonderiing: was there enemy fire or not, did Kerry actually try to avoid danger to himself; did he work hard to get the citations he needed to get out of combat. With Bush we are talking about proportional fonts.
Bush did exactly what he signed up to do, including a lot of hours flying fighters, for about 4 years out of a 6 year commitment. From then on he clearly had "other priorities," to borrow from Dick Cheney. For whatever reason, there is no official record that makes him look particularly bad on this. Kerry was surely foolish to suggest that anything other than serving in combat, including serving in the National Guard, was tantamount to desertion.
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