...it's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there...
Does it make you mad that Dan Rather and CBS still insist that the Microsoft Word created forgery is not a forgery? Does it make you mad that they think they can so easily lie to America and get away with it?
Look at this animated gif file, created by the folks at Little Green Footballs, showing the CBS forgery and a Word document that you can create for yourself in just a few minutes.* As you can see, they are identical.
Now here's a detailed post at The Shape of Days, which shows the unsuccessful attempt to reproduce the memo on an early 70's IBM Selectric Composer, a typewriter that featured superscript and proportional font capabilities. The most interesting information is at the bottom of the post, regarding the difficulty in centering text on a 70's era machine.
[C]entering type is hard on the Selectric Composer. Two of the memos, May 4 and August 1, 1972, feature a three-line centered head. Each of those lines of type had to be centered by measuring it carefully, doing some math, then advancing the carrier to just the right point on the page. The margin for error would be pretty wide because type can be off by a few points in either direction and still look pretty well centered. It wouldn't be objectionable unless you went looking for it. So it wasn't necessary for Lt. Col. Killian — or his typist — to be millimeter-precise.Contrast that with the ease and duplicability of the same task using Microsoft Word.And yet … he was.
If Rather and CBS News are not liars and crooks, then they are morons and incompetents. Either way, their attempt to slander the President and to influence an election during wartime is so despicable that i think it's almost treasonous.
It takes only two seconds to click on the "Contact Us" link at CBS's website and demand that 1) Dan Rather resign and 2) CBS disclose who gave them the forged documents. If you have already done so once, it certainly wouldn't hurt to keep at it.
Please join me in this crusade. Click here to learn how.
Update: Bill at INDC Journal has information on how to let the Boston Globe know what you think of them, too.
* i've done this myself, on my own computer, using the default settings on Microsoft Word 2000. i now have in my possession an exact duplicate of the CYA memo. Perfectly congruent down to the tiny superscript characters. Try it on your own computer, it's fun.
Only a supreme fool or a liar would say that the CBS memos are not forgeries after having done this simple experiment. It is obviously impossible for Killian to have made the exact same mental choices about tab settings, and carriage returns on an analog mechanical typewriter as a digital computer program that had not yet been invented. Unless Killian was a time traveller, which according to the logic of CBS and Rather, is remotely possible and therefore a rational explanation.
He's toast.
Posted by: Scof on Sep. 13, 2004Annika,
All trees you see are trees. I agree. All forged document you see are forged. I agree.
No problem Annika. Just tell me what to say up front so I can be sure to please you and I will do my best to stay on topic as well. I have no interest in a blog of my own. Preaching to the choir has no appeal. However, talking to the choir about the merits of another conductor is more challenging
Now let me ask you why in the time of an undeclared war is it treasonous to try an influence an election? I though everybody was trying to influence the election?
It seems to me that slander is the natural order of things. Truth is, of course the real defense against slander. If the WH would produce all the documents related to W's time in the guard, all this squabbling would end. His press sec. did not say he was not called for a physical, just that he completed his service and was discharged. Why doesn't McClellan simple say there is no truth in the memos?
On the other hand, if they prove to be forgeries, which they certainly look as if they may, it will be interesting to see how CBS handles it. And how the voters handle it. I think you all will be glad that this episode took place. It gave you plenty of opportunity for moral outrage, eas evidence of the LW bias of the press and it will assuredly give the Bush team more votes than the Kerry clan. In fact, if Karl didn't plant them, he wishes he did.
CBS and D. Rather may take the Bush approach to fallacious reoportage. They may very well claim DR was misled, not intentionally of course, by his trustworthy but inept staff. How can we say Dan lied if the people who work for him just didn't have it quite together?
If Dan Rather, in all good faith, delivered his report based on faulty intelligence why should we hold him to a higher standard then the one Mr. Bush has set for himself and you have agreed to uphold.
Maybe the folks who think Mr. Bush should not be re elected are just like you? The buck has to stop somewhere? Right? If not with George or Dan, then who?
Mike:
The lady has asked you to leave.
Don't go away mad; just go away.
Posted by: shelly s. on Sep. 13, 2004ShellyS.
Shelly? Shelly who? Shelly the enforcer? Shelly the what?
It looked as if I was given an ultimatum in the last post-"stay on topic, don't accuse "the lady" as you defer to her, of being a tautologist, and refrain from indulging sophistry. You know as well as I how easy it is to block or delete a post, right?
Well, you read the above post, did you not? I almost agreed that the memos are forgeries, today I am agreeing even more. I politely asked what the effect on voters would be and how responsibility might be accepted. I made a fair, I thought, analogy to the President and his intelligence service giving him bad data and how he responded. Or rather how you responded. Did you write letters about the non existent yellow cake purchase or the stockpiles of WMD’s, or the assertion that within 15 min a gas or bio-weapon attack could be launched, or that there was a demonstrable and substantial connection between Iraq and the 911 attack, or that after successfully demolishing the Taliban in Afghanistan, we have let much of the country fall back into their hands so they can raise poppies, make heroin and collect vast sums to help in their quest to kill us? How many angry emails did this prompt?
And where is that MF’er OBL?? I want him dead, don’t you? He tore down my skyline, killed 3000 my fellow NYers, made me walk through a city that looked and smelled like a war zone, nearly bankrupted my business and has gotten away scott free! I am pissed.
Now, why would you like to see a different point of view leave rather than discussing the important points I have raised? I am curious as to why Bush is allowed to go on Governing after accepting bad intelligence, more than once, from his staff and passing it to the American public as truth and never apologizing once it was shown to be un -truth. You think Dan Rather must be pilloried. Is this not a double standard?
Would our previous congress have let Bill Clinton stay around if he, on three or four occasions, grinned and shuffled about how he could not be held accountable for the work product of his intelligence services and a thousand dead soldiers had come home in boxes from a conflict that seemed now, in the light of day, to have been a clever ruse?