Seems that the study claiming parents lose IQ is in fact an urban legend . Not true. No such thing.
Similarly, the Washington Post thinks that the CBS documents probably aren't real either. Looks bad for CBS — if this isn't real it will go down with the Hitler Diaries scandal. Which means it's all been one great big disctraction from reality—as US News & World Report has been showing independently of the CBS docs, GW Bush's own account of how he met his service obligations just don't add up no matter how you try.
And, if the forgeries are fake, which I now consider likely, we have CBS to thank. Not only will they have brought these (still alleged) forgeries into the public eye, they will have continued to drag the story on for days, instead of promptly reconsidering the evidence.
Subsequently, stories about the National Guard will be even more easily dismissed and ignored. Additionally, as CBS is unlikely to burn its “unimpeachable” source, we can look forward to rampant speculation that the DNC or Kerry campaign was behind the release of the documents.
Thank you, CBS!
The most convincing evidence in the Post story are the content errors: comparisons with contemporaneous documents found inconsistencies in terminology and the use of a wrong address. This is the first time I’ve read those things reported.
And, obviously, that’s something CBS should have checked. Apparently they thought the verification of the signature in a document copy was sufficient.
Bad. Very bad. Extremely bad.
Dan Rather will never live this down. CBS won’t live it down until they retire Dan Rather.
Worse: Bush gets a free ride in the public eye even though he is guilty of what the forged documents accused him of doing. The right wing media is blaming Kerry, without evidence. Some swing voters will make their decision based on this.
As I put it, the fake memos are probably false presentation of true information 🙂
And that’s why the White House has been so quiet so far.
So now, nobody will believe a true presentation of true information …
Remember Agatha Christie’s short-story “Witness for the Prosecution”? The wife of the accused murderer knows that he’s guilty and knows that her assertions of his innocence would be ignored. So she acts the part of the angry, betrayed spouse and becomes the star witness for the prosecution. She then leaks information to the defense that reveals that her story is false, which is then revealed dramatically in court.
Of course, he’s guilty, and the remaining evidence shows he is, but he is easily aquitted.
(The play version of the short story added a twist to the ending, but I won’t reveal that here.)
I think the CBS docs may have the same effect.
Why ddo you trust the Washington Post, known to be favorable to the Bush Administration, over CBS news? Theres no reason to, if one of them is lying, the one with a demonstrable bias seems like the more obvious suspect. It’s going to take a lot more than some Washington Post story to make me think these memo’s are fake. You people said the the supercript TH made it fake, you said that the ‘kerning’ made it fake. You’ve claimed it was fake on the basis of at least 4 different reasons at this point. ALL of them have been proven BS. So forgive me if I don’t buy the latest round of BS this time.
I do hope Democrats remember who you’ve stabbed them in the back on this.
Hmm, why would Professor Froomkin trust the Washington Post…
Hmm, what might Professor Froomkin know, say, for example, about any reporter possibly doing midday weekday reports for the paper on the POTUS and his staff…
Nah, this is conspiratorial…he’s just happy they busted Nixon.
Seth may very well be right about “True Information/False Presentation”
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091504dnpolnatguard.1185eb4ae.html
The Dallas Morning News interviews LTCOL Killian’s secretary of the era (she is now in her 80s) and she says basically, that the documents are inconsistent with what was produced at the time. However, she also says the general content of the documents is true, though some details and wording aren’t consistent.