Journalists Who Won't Give Up (Mary Mapes, etc)

The Washington Post ^ | 11/21/05 | Howard Kurtz

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Its the Planet of the Mapes.

[COBOL2Java]

I always thought that the burden of proof was on Mapes.

No no no! The burden of proof is on you, the critic! Mary says so in numerous interviews.

Someone ought to publish an investigative report on how monkeys fly out of Mary Mapes' butt, or how she has fairy godparents, or how she comes from a line of demon spawn, and then challenge people to dispove it in the same way she challenges us (after all, the monkeys only fly out when nobody's looking!).

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Mapes is right that the purported 30-year-old memos by Bush's long-dead squadron commander have not been proven to be forgeries

Below is forged CBS document overlayed by Microsoft Word in default mode......courtesy Little Green Footballs..

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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....you go girl...

[ccmay]

But anyone who doubts for a minute that these documents are forgeries simply hasn't looked at the evidence.

You got that right. Here it is again, for those who never saw it or need a reminder:

This is the Mapes memo forgery, superimposed with the output of Charles Johnson's Word 2004 program. Identical to the millimeter, except for some artificial "aging".

A large reward has been offered to anybody who can do this using any typewriter or typesetting machine available in 1972. Nobody has claimed it, and nobody ever will.

What's more, even if you lay aside the type face question, content analysis shows more holes in this memo than you can shake a stick at. Most conspicuously, the abbreviations and layout are Army National Guard, not Air Force. Bill Burkett, take a bow.

CBS, Dan Rather, and Mary Mapes used forged military documents in an attempt to stage a coup d'état. Never forget that. In a just world, they would face a firing squad.

-ccm

[freespirited]

Kurtz claims:

Mapes is right that the purported 30-year-old memos by Bush's long-dead squadron commander have not been proven to be forgeries

Yup. As long as you don't define what proof is, nothing is ever proven. So it's only of passing interest that Killian's secretary thinks the documents are forgeries and says that there was no proportional spacing typewriter in their offices. Same for the reality that certain facts in the memos are wrong and that some of the terms used were Army rather than Air Force terms. It's a minor point for people like Mapes that the stylistic elements were wrong for the Air Natl Guard. Or that Joseph Newcomer, someone who actually knows what he is talking about, has to this to say:

The probability that any technology in existence in 1972 would be capable of producing a document that is nearly pixel-compatible with Microsoft’s Times New Roman font and the formatting of Microsoft Word, and that such technology was in casual use at the Texas Air National Guard, is so vanishingly small as to be indistinguishable from zero.

BTW, his full analysis is here:

http://www.flounder.com/bush2.htm

After all, he's just another blogger to people like Mapes and Kurtz.

[1L]

>>Mapes is right that the purported 30-year-old memos by Bush's long-dead squadron commander have not been proven to be forgeries<<

Huh?

Yes, they have, Howie.

[Col Freeper]

Howie, Howie, Howie,

I always enjoy it whenever one of you lefties produce a bit of "Mad Mary Mapes" bashing, even though you are only doing it so that you can later say "look here, we are fair and balanced too!".

Of course, I am never surprised that you will transition all such articles into full-up Bush Bashing by the time you reach the article's end.

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

Mapes is right that the purported 30-year-old memos by Bush's long-dead squadron commander have not been proven to be forgeries...

Wanna bet!? What sort of standard of proof do these clowns operate on? The near-perfect way in which the memos are duplicated by the default settings in Microsoft Word, and the fact that specialized superscripts were not then easily available (if at all) proved to me, and I think most here, that these were out and out frauds.

[martin_fierro]