I have to chime in here and say that I also don’t believe this is totally tinfoil hat territory. Unlikely maybe, but far from unreasonable.
My biggest problem with the forgery theory has been motive. Here we have someone who goes to the trouble to get all the info, names and dates, etc. more or less correct, and has the contacts and resources to get CBS to accept it as genuine, then doesn’t bother to obtain and use a friggin typewriter. You might have to go to a little bit of trouble to obtain a vintage typewriter but it’s not impossible. Certainly not for someone as obviously motivated and resourceful as this person or persons were. And for what, some possible small gain for Kerry versus a possible huge minus if discovered. Most people don’t seem to care about the Guard stuff anyway so there doesn’t seem to be a lot to gain by it. On the other hand, if people believed that someone in the Kerry camp were involved in a forgery that could be a huge hit against Kerry.
On the flip side, if Rove could pull off something like this it could be a huge hit against Kerry. All he had to do was create some badly, but not quite blatantly, forged documents and then use his contacts and resources to pawn them off on CBS. Then he could have some rightwing bloggers start complaining loudly about proportional font, superscripts, etc. This could totally discredit the Kerry camp if suspicion falls on them, plus the timing distracts people from Ben Barnes and maybe even links the documents with him in some peoples minds. And people who point to Rove as a possible perpetrator could be labeled as nutty conspiracy theorists. I’m not saying that this is likely but I think it is as likely as the forgeries coming from the Kerry camp. And Rove apparently has a record of doing such things.
CBS claims they got the memo from a “solid” source. Do you seriously think they would describe Karl Rove as “solid”?
For heaven’s sweet sake - the knots you people tie yourselves into.
Face it - if this cast the slightest doubt onto something Kerry said or did, you would dismiss it out of hand. But it is about Bush, and therefore you are stretching to find something - anything - to justify taking this as anything but exactly what it is - a Kerry supporter faking some documents smearing Bush close to the election, and CBS falling for it, hook, line and sinker.
Regards,
Shodan
Apparently Killians secretary, who would have typed the memos, believes that they are reproductions, i.e. the memos were not ones produced by Killian himself.
However, she also believes that whoever wrote them was cribbing directly from the originals in that even though they may not be real documents, they are accurate. She recalls Bush’s case clearly and indicates that she produced similar memoranda for Killian that he did keep in a personal file.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/4981849.html
So we are left with the idea that the documents may be forgeries, but they are, in fact, accurate. Where does this leave us?
cj
Firstly, I don’t think many people believe Bush didn’t get some kind of special treatment to get into the Guard. Secondly, I don’t think many people believe that Bush was a stellar performer once he got in-- at least not in terms of putting in his best effort at attendance
If the secretary is correct, one obvious explanation as to why the originals were copied is to leave something out. I’m not saying that would be the ONLY reason, but it sure should be up there on the top of the list.
Exactly where politicians want us: dazed and confused. “It is lucky for rulers that men do not think.” — Adolf Hitler
If we accept that the secretary is correct and the the “forgeries” are accurate, what type of information would have been left out? I assume you are suggesting that what was left out might be in some way exculpatory (correct me if I’m wrong). If something exculpatory was known to Killian and his secretary, might we not expect the secretary to have mentioned it?
If this were in a court of law, the documents in question would likely be knocked out by her testimony. However, her direct testimony as to the accuracy of the facts stated in those documents would be admissable and persuasive. (Not that anyone really cares what would happen in court . . .)
So I guess there is still the issue of who sandbagged CBS. I am fairly confident that they wouldn’t have done this to themselves. But does it really matter? We still have some pretty persuasive evidence that Bush did neglect to take his physical after he was ordered to do so. How does this reflect on him?
It suggests to me that he was operating under some serious misconceptions concerning his duties, a situation that makes me wonder about how he approaches issues of import, or he was operating under the assumption that the rules did not apply to him. Neither of these situations inspire confidence. And frankly, his MO during his term doesn’t clearly point out that he no longer operates in either of these ways.
I suppose that Bush could have been operating under false assumptions that he derived from various advisors that he didn’t have to worry about the issues we’re up in arms about. And, as it turns out, that is indeed the case. A self-absorbed young man could easily fall into this trap, especially if his advisors were highly placed, which his surely were. I just can’t shake the feeling that Bush did and continues to operate under the impression that the rules not only don’t apply, but shouldn’t apply to his actions.
cj
For God’s sake Shodan, I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that Rove personally rang Rather’s doorbell and handed him the memos. It would have been more subtle than that. As I said, I think it’s unlikely that Rove is behind it, but I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call it tinfoil hat territory. We obviously disagree.
Would that be the taco ringing the tomale, or the enchilada ringing the burrito?
Okay, can somebody please explain the Mexican food jokes to me?
in the 1996 election coverage, Space Cadet Dan Rather went off on one of his bizarre psychotic episodes. Recapping the election results thus far, he said, “They say California’s the big burrito; Texas is a big taco right now. We want to follow that through. Florida is a big tamale.”
See this site for more:
Not that I’m a big Rather defender or anything - I’ve never really had an opinion either way or even paid much attention to him. But this sounds to me like a lame attempt at humor rather than a “bizarre psychotic episode”.
That’s why I supplied you the link, so you could contextualize it and see for yourself.
I found the mexican food humor slightly amusing.
Back to the topic, CBS news is sure to grab onto that secretary’s comments like a drowning man onto a life preserver.
… caught in a rising tide of bullshit generated by the storm of hateful partisan conservatives blinded by fanboy party loyalty and unconcerned with truth, accuracy, or even ethics.
If it is true that Rove NEVER gets caught and that all we “know” about his dirty tricks are theories and suppositions I would guess Bush and Rove aren’t too worried about that.
The story is now 1% Bush, 99% CBS.
I still think it’s going to die down in a week or so.
Turns out that when FOX’s Brit Hume, Sean Hannity, etc. showed that pic of Fonda and Kerry next to each other (instead of Kerry being three rows back and off to the side a bit) at the antiwar (Vietnam) rally, they didn’t have the original. How bloody clueless can they get?
How long before Hume and Hannity resign or are fired?
Quite a while, apparently.
Why the soft bigotry of low expectations for right-wing media? (I think we’ve already covered that subject as applied to right-wing Presidents.)
Maybe you rarely hear the left complaining about it…but here it is. Note that FAIR apparently operates on a much smaller budget than the Media Research Center and yet, IMHO (admittedly biased), they come up with more solid examples that don’t just rely on taking quotes out of context and saying, “This sounds biased.” They come up with actual errors of fact and glaring omissions of fact, like on the whole issue of under what circumstances the weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998.
(By the way, I would guess that you “rarely hear the left complaining about it” perhaps because you rarely hear the left, which may say more about media bias than anything else.)
Interesting development
**Ex-aide disavows Bush Guard memos**
*02:56 PM CDT on Wednesday, September 15, 2004
By PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News *
HOUSTON – The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard officer who supposedly wrote memos critical of President Bush’s Guard service said Tuesday that the documents are fake but that they reflect documents that once existed.
“The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones,” she said. “I probably typed the information and somebody picked up the information some way or another.”
This would fit with the theory that the originals were at some point transcribed or OCR’d into an electronic archive and CBS’s source printed them out from there. Surely somebody somewhere knows whether or not old TANG documents were archived in this manner.