"Share your concern - they're helping to create a strawman that can be knocked down."
Yup.
My real question, though, is this: This is such a clumsy forgery that it was sure to be discovered. Why was it done so clumsily? And for what reason?
I mean the signs of forgery were so obvious that it was spotted before the show was even over. If it hadn't have been Buckhead, I'd have spotted it too.
Now, I can understand a bunch of 20-somethings not spotting it, and that's who works in newsrooms. I can understand Rather not spotting it because he's so old he can't find his weenie when it's time to pee.
But....whoever made these memos up was smarter than that. On one line, they deliberately put a space between the number and the "th" so it wouldn't superscript in Word. On another, the let the superscript happen. They'd have seen that. They'd have known that, because they did something to avoid it earlier in the document.
Now, if I were going to make fake memos from 1972, I'd find some paper, an old office typewriter (not an electric) and type the damn thing out.
This is too obvious, and I'm worried. Why was an obvious forged document send to CBS, and by whom? I'm worried.
oh, so you're one up for the "Karl Rove did it" theory?
Hey, remember when Registered did that photo of Jane Fonda and Kerry? It was done as a parody, but was then soon picked up and distributed like it were the genuine article. Maybe they started as a hoax among some dumb ass Rats, and found their way into Rather's hands, who could not resist running with it.
>>Now, if I were going to make fake memos from 1972, I'd find some paper, an old office typewriter (not an electric) and type the damn thing out.
This is too obvious, and I'm worried. Why was an obvious forged document send to CBS, and by whom? I'm worried.<<<
Good God man pull yourself together.
LOL
What are you worried about...further (real) documentation that is more damning? A Republican source? A distraction?
I've been worried about this for the last 24 hours. But then the Niger memos out of Italy made their way to the UN when some said they were phony at first glance. I just don't know what to make of it, but I am more than suspicious.
You may be giving the forger too much credit. Almost anyone, regardless of typing skills, can knock out a decent-looking document in MS Word, using default settings (as this doc used). The average user doesn't know much about fonts or spacing, only that the typefaces look somewhat similar. Heck, anyone below the age of 30 might not even know typewriters ever existed!
You assume that spaces were inserted intentionally to prevent superscript, but it could just as easily have been a typing error by someone with not much eye for detail.
Perhaps you, or anyone with a degree of intelligence/experience, would have paid much more attention to detail, such as aged paper, the use of a typewriter of that era, and conformity to military abbreviations, but suppose the originator never thought these documents would be publicly distributed (by the White House, no less) and thus would not subjected to the resulting scrutiny?
Dumb? Yes. An intentional strawman? Not necessarily.
I think you are giving them too much credit for their intelligence. These people THINK they are the smartest people on the face of the earth and us 'Great Unwashed', would never catch on to their deception.
There are too many people getting nervous, just because of what Dan Rather said. As far as I'm concerned, all I needed to see was that overlay and it matched perfectly. END OF CASE.
Lets face it, how many on this forum, would have noticed the forgery, if it were not for one person? That's all it takes is ONE person to point it out and it snowballs. That's why the forger thought it wouldn't be noticed (if he was aware of it himself)
You should also consider the fact that it was picked up run, and is STILL running with the media, these people are VERY concerned about what story they back up and report.
This thing has taken on a life of it's own and in the end it IS going to proven forgery to everyone.
I don't think they were that smart at all. You can turn the feature off in Word that superscripts the 'th'. They couldn't figure out how to do it so they left a space there instead. They missed one. It's a sloppy forgery at that.