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Now even I didn't want to bite at the possible conspiracy theory that Rove is somehow involved with these memos, as some lefty bloggers have suggested. Buzzflash points to some background info. on this piece of shit Rove:
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributo...9/con04385.html
Well, perhaps it is a pattern, but it's still fairly farfetched, even to a conspiricist nut like myself.
But then the Observer brings up a few good points on how the whole memo questions transpired:
http://observer.com/pages/frontpage3.asp
And I unfortunately took my tin hat off and gave a little read. Notably:
| quote: | Mr. Rather’s report hadn’t been over 10 minutes when a post appeared on the right-wing Web site FreeRepublic.com from "TankerKC," saying the documents were "not in the style that we used when I came into the USAF … can we get a copy of those memos?"
Three hours and a little later, fat met fire with another FreeRepublic posting, this one from a blogger named "Buckhead." He (or she—Buckhead won’t reveal his identity outside cyberspace) wrote:
Every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90’s. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn’t used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80’s used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old …. This should be pursued aggressively.
Here the plot starts a-thickening.
First (leaving aside how suspiciously well Buckhead puts sentences together for a righty blogger), there’s the extraordinary, yeah, boggling, knowledge of typewriting arcana. More remarkable still are the circumstances under which discernment occurred. Namely, viewing the document on a TV screen from a presumed distance of six to a dozen feet. Folks who make their living at this sort of thing rely on magnifying glasses, if not microscopes. And they don’t venture opinions unless the document’s in their puss. |
-and-
| quote: | Another timing oddity which may or may not be related to the mysterious Buckhead, depending on your choice of villain, is the Pentagon’s release of allegedly newly-discovered records of Mr. Bush’s flight hours and middling piloting abilities one day almost to the minute before Mr. Rather’s report—following four months of insisting there were no more documents to disgorge. Second coincidence: The Pentagon release came hours after the Boston Globe, poring through yet other records, reported that Mr. Bush "fell well short of meeting his military obligation" by failing to report to a Boston-area Guard unit after he enrolled in the Harvard Business School, and by earlier ducking out on required training and drills for a total of nine months. Either could have landed Mr. Bush on full-time active duty for two years, potentially in Vietnam. But he received no punishment whatsoever.
Finally, there’s a detail that appears to have escaped press notice: The Web site where Buckhead’s posting appeared also happens to be the repository for anti-Jew, anti-Catholic, anti-homosexual, anti-John Kerry rants by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D. And whom, you ask, is Dr. Corsi? Co-author of the best-selling Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, that’s who. |
-finally-
| quote: | Meanwhile, things were cooking at another right-wing site, littlegreenfootballs.com, which joined the party at 11:30 p.m. eastern time with its own take. By morning, other bloggers were twittering and alarums were issuing from the established right, including (Salon reported) Cybercast News, part of veteran "liberal media" basher L. Brent Bozell’s empire; and Creative Response Concepts, an Arlington, Va., P.R. emporium whose clients include the Republican National Committee, the Christian Coalition and a lengthy list of like-minded others. Its senior staff is heavy with Pat Robertson alumni, one of whom serves as official spokesman for—you guessed right again—Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Bloggers were in a frenzy now, traffic so heavy that one site got knocked offline by the volume. But most stayed in the hunt, and at 2:41 Thursday afternoon, with the Rather story less than 19 hours old, a blogger reported consulting with a forensic expert who’d assessed the Killian documents as fishy, too. Soon thereafter, an uncharacteristically tardy Matt Drudge weighed in with his first "FLASH!" This led to Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard professing indignation at 5 p.m. An hour later, so did even huffier Fox, where Brit Hume reported that an office elf had created a Killian clone with Microsoft Word.
All that remained was for the allegedly nonpartisan mainstreammedia—"MSM," in blogspeak—to get into the act. They did so with relish, led by the A.P. and happy-to-pee-on-CBS-News ABC. The next day, the contretemps made The New York Times and The Washington Post, which played the story the same as they had the Swift Boat stuff: This guy says this, that guy says that, and even if we know who’s full of it, our job ain’t telling you.
Fresh from offering Bob Dole a platform to spread unchallenged slanders about John Kerry’s war wounds, Wolf Blitzer chipped in by posting on CNN’s Web site a 30-year old transcript of Dan Rather being unawed by Richard Nixon during a Watergate press conference. "Now," intoned Wolf, "the 72-year-old CBS News anchor finds himself in yet another confrontation with a Republican President." (For a hint of lupine motive, Google "Blitzer AIPAC").
From there it was off to the races, every furlong adding new typewriter experts offering this, that and the other opinion about Times New Roman, proportional spacing and "superscript," the gizmo that makes tiny "th’s" after numbers. Demonstrating thoroughness (or need to fill airtime and column inches), the press also served up quotes from various and sundry friends and family members of the principals involved—including the daughter of Ben Barnes, who phoned up a Dallas talk-radio station to call her father a liar.
Poor Mr. Barnes. Even if he did condemn some other mother’s son to Vietnam, you had to feel for him. On top of the Oedipal run-in with the kid (that’ll be an interesting Thanksgiving dinner), the Republican National Committee, well-prepared for this moment, disgorged an encyclopedia of bile enumerating his "ethical mishaps." |
So chuck it up as a series of coincidences if you will. But it's not only these documents that smell a little fishy to me.
___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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