[aruanan]

Would a doctor diagnose you by looking at 5th or 6th generation non-digitalized x-rays? He is being prudent, as I would be. He is heavily leaning toward forgery. But he cannot say at this point with absolute certainty.

The x-ray allusion is a false analogy because there are plenty of things that can definitively be known here apart from the copy-induced fuzziness. Certain fonts or classes of fonts can be definitively ruled in or out. That's diagnostic. The language that is used (the date, address, abbreviations, titles, names) written in a way not used by the military and that is clearly legible regardless of the sharpness of the letters is a definitive diagnostic. The form in which the language appears on the page is definitive and does not depend upon the sharpness of the individual letters to be diagnostic of forgery. The presence or absence of letterheads, the appearance of someone already retired at the purported time of composition, is diagnostic and doesn't rely on sharper letters.

What we have with this expert is something like the following: Someone has already identified an animal as being a beaver based on many different features, but a beaver hair expert is saying he can't conclusively identify the creature as a beaver unless he can have a hair sample to tell whether it's C. canadensis or C. fiber.

[doug from upland]

This is getting irritating and I am almost sorry I interviewed him. We know it is a forgery. He probably knows it is a forgery. He would never testify in court, however, without seeing the original. HE IS JUST BEING PRUDENT, DAMMIT! Give it a rest.

How about this. A psychiatrist would not publicly proclaim that John Kerry is mentally ill unless he at least had a 2-minute session with him.