The "defense" was the most dishonest thing I've ever seen.

I can only do this quickly and sloppily. You'll have to fill in the details. Truth is, I didn't want to do it at all -- I just wanted to link someone making the points I wanted to make -- but I don't see anyone making these exact points, so here goes.

(Lots of mispellings and capital letters coming up-- I gots little time for bolding. I'll pretty it up later.)

1) He did not deal with any of the difficult issues-- no discussion of proportional spacing versus mono-space, nor of kerning.

2) He said that only "internet political partisans" were calling the documents fakes. He deliberately did not reveal to his audience that experts in the field cited by ABCNews, AP, etc., had also stated the docs were forgeries.

3) He dishonestly conflated the existence of a TYPEFACE with an actual TYPEWRITER using that typeface. Yes, Dan, typesetters have had hundreds of typefaces to select from for 100 years. But only a small fraction of those typefaces were available as typewriter font-- the question everyone's asking.

Rather deliberately gave the impression that typewriters featuring NTR had been around since 1931. From what I know -- and I'm no expert -- that's just not true, and the fact that Dan Rather did not specifically say that typewriters used NTR since 1931 makes me sure I'm right.

Why state something craftily when truth is on your side?

4) I believe he dishonestly conflated the special small-size superscript everyone's talking about with the routine typewriter function of just turning the cylinder a half-turn to raise a FULL SIZED LETTER half-way up from the main line. That's been possible for 60 years-- just as Dan said. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about small-font superscripts which could only be typed with special keys.

Those, too, were probably available on some custom-balls. But Dan dishonestly suggested this was a routine feature.

5) His expert was a handwriting expert. He was not competent to speak about typefaces generally. I suspect this was by design.

6) Dan Rather lied again when he said his own handwriting expert was "bothered by the same sorts of things that troubled the internet critics," and then he listed poor copy quality and degradation of sharpness during reproduction as the "things" the "internet critics" were bothered by."

Has anyone ONCE cited the poor quality of the reproductions as evidence of their falsity? No, no one has. Dan Rather lied to imply that what we were all so bothered by was the simple loss of sharpness through repeated copying. Anyone watching the show who wasn't informed in this debate would think, "Oh, duh, of COURSE quality will degrade, is that what all the fuss was about?"

No, ma'am. That is most emphatically not what all the fuss was about.

7) Administrative Officer Strong, who was supposedly the big human witness who could confirm the genuineness of the documents, could only confirm the the documents followed military format and spoke of "issues" and "names" that might have been written about in such documents.

He seemed to have no real personal knowledge of Killian specifically, nor of Bush, nor any specific reasons for believing these documents were genuine. He could only state things in a negative fashion, i.e., "I can't see any reason to think they're forgeries." But his inability to cite any specific POSITIVE evidence for believing they're genuine shows that he's a witness who pretty much doesn't know anything.

If you ask me "Is there anything in this bear's stool that strikes you as odd?" I will say "No."

Nope. Nothing strikes me as odd.

Also, nothing strikes me as not-odd, either.

Nothing strikes me at all. It's bear-poop. Kopro incognito.

He then trotted out an anti-Bush author to "confirm" the documents were true because they (paraphrase) "agree with what we already know."

Glad we're above dealing with "partisans," Dan!

9) This is the last piece of dishonesty-- Dan Rather, who previously claimed to be breaking new information, is now claiming that his "new information" is credible because it simply repeats "what we already know" -- but if it's what we already know, it's not new information.

He's trying to prove the credibility of the information by bootstrapping-- it's new stuff that adds to our knowlege of Bush's TANG service, and the reason we know it's genuine is that it's old information we already know.

Oh, no, that won't quite work, Dan. Anything new -- and these documents DO contain lots of new information, that's why you deemed them, you know, news on Wednesday -- cannot, by definition, be authenticated by saying that the old information says the same thing.

The old information did not say the same thing, Dan.

This will not stand.

PS: When I say it was just about the most dishonest thing I've ever seen, I mean that-- and I include politicians' lies in that mix.

What made this defense so outrageous is that it utilized all the usual petty dishonesties of political deception-- refusing to even acknowledge the questions you can't answer, dwellling on those few you can, deliberately conflating distinct terms to confuse an ill-informed audience, etc.

He was lying like a politician-- a very noxious one.

And yet he's "the media" -- the one we're supposed to trust. The disinterested, neutral, ojbective fair-and-balanced down-the-middle no-nonsense hard news man.

He's a liar. And not a particularly convincing one.

Ironically enough, he reminded me of Nixon tonight-- Nixon, just before the final "V" finger wave.

Update! Nick Kronos weighs in on Rather's dodgy defense.

Posted by: Ace at 03:57 PM | Comments (41)
Post contains 949 words, total size 6 kb.

Interesting stuff. The guy seems to be heding when the NYT talks to him, but overall, it still seems extraordinary unlikely that these documents are anything but crude forgeries created in the recent past.

And... QandO provides a more extensive recap of the evidence than I did-- and also a much more concise one.

Don't expect Dan the Document Man to address the dozens of indica of forgery.

Via Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (16)
Post contains 82 words, total size 1 kb.

They call it "a slight lead." I call it "margin of victory."

And of course there was this little WaPo/ABCNews Poll yesterday, showing a nine point lead among likelies, 52-43.

I don't want to say that the Democrats are losing confidence in Kerry, but five minutes ago I just heard Susan Estrich say, "Aw, fuck it, who am I kidding? I'm voting for Bush too."

Pat Cadell Said It, Not Me Update: Don't tell me I'm tempting fate by gloating prematurely; he said it. I didn't.

Don't shoot the messenger.

I'm not saying that Kerry is beginning to doubt he can win, but my sources inform me he just wrote a letter to the Federal Elections Committee Chairman asking, "Is there any truth to the rumor that the runner-up in a presidential election gets a brand-new Suzuki Sidekick? And, if so, would it be available in Teal?"

Posted by: Ace at 01:41 PM | Comments (4)
Post contains 155 words, total size 1 kb.

There are three arguments made by those who wish to claim these documents are genuine:

1) There is a superscripted "th" in a contemporary document in Bush's record that we know for a fact is genuine.

This just isn't really true, even though Josh Marshall says it is.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:06 PM | Comments (21)
Post contains 1310 words, total size 8 kb.

This election may turn out to not be "tighter than a tick on turnip's tit" or whatever the hell Dan the Document Man says.

I don't want to say that Democrats are starting to panic, but Chris Lehane was just seen on CNN trying to distance himself from himself.

Posted by: Ace at 12:26 PM | Comments (3)
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

The original post was entirely in error. Rather actually does say he believes the documents are authentic:

DAN RATHER, CBS NEWS ANCHOR: I know that this story is true. I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they would not have been. There isn't going to be -- there's no -- what you're saying apology?

I missed that part. Sorry.

The rest of the post will be left here (as I shouldn't bury my errors), but it'll be beyond the jump. It's an incorrect story, and there's no point reading it except to have a laugh at me.

PS: Dave at Garfield Ridge didn't actually lead me down this path, although I cited him in the post as suggesting something similar. He didn't actually suggest what I did. So I'm wrong, he's not. Dave's point-- that Rather seems to be suggesting that however they came upon this story, the story remains true in any event, still looks good. Rather does seem to be de-emphasizing the documents he this past Wednesday put so much stock in.

Now, Phil on the other hand...
more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (9)
Post contains 498 words, total size 3 kb.

And Yet John Edwards, Apparently Not Having Received the Talking Points, Demands Bush Respond to Rove's Forgeries

A lot of people predicted this was coming:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe today said neither his organization nor John Kerry´s campaign leaked to CBS documents questioning President Bush´s service record, which may have been forged.

He suggested White House adviser Karl Rove could be behind the documents.

"I can unequivocally say that no one involved here at the Democratic National Committee had anything at all to do with any of those documents. If I were an aspiring young journalist, I think I would ask Karl Rove that question," Mr. McAuliffe said.

Asked later if he believed Mr. Rove or Republican operatives were involved, he said: "I am telling you that nobody — Democratic National Committee or groups associate with us — were involved in any way with these documents. I am just saying I would ask Karl Rove the same question."

He did not explain how the White House would benefit by providing forged documents trying to undermine Mr. Bush´s service record, but emphasized that he "can unequivocally speak for the Kerry campaign" in saying they had nothing to do with the documents either.

Although he does not quite admit the documents are forged, his Karl-Rove-Planted-Those-to-Discredit-Kerry theory only makes sense if they are, in fact, forgeries. If they're real-- Karl Rove wouldn't disseminate them, now would he?

Okay. So if Terry McAuliffe is tacitly admitting the documents are forged (and blaming it on Rove), can anyone explain why, precisely, John Edwards is out on the hustings demanding that Bush "answer" the charges contained in the forged documents?:

NASHUA - President Bush should have to explain newly released records that reveal his former Texas National Guard superior was asked to “sugar coat” performance records after finding Bush failed standards to be a trained pilot, Sen. John Edwards said Thursday.

“I think they are reasonable and legitimate questions the White House ought to answer,” Edwards said during an interview with The Telegraph.

I realize the Kerry-Edwards team favors taking as many positions as possible. But can they really simultaneously claim that the documents are forgeries and that President Bush is obliged to respond to the allegations contained in these admitted forgeries?

Nuance or nonsense? You make the call.

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (16)
Post contains 397 words, total size 3 kb.

I expected as much. Dan isn't going out like a chump with this debacle as his swan song. He wants to ride it out, hoping that he can get by on the occasional suggestion by an expert that it's possible that some funky high-end custom-job typerwiter could have, maybe produced documents kinda-sorta looking a little like these.

CBSNews has decided to roll the dice along with him, perhaps guessing that the rest of the Old Media will let the story go (a fair gamble on CBS' part, no doubt) and perhaps half out of a sense of loyalty to long-serving Liberal Dan.

But they're just making it worse for themselves. They can continue pinning their hopes on some fanciful tinkerer's super-typerwriter only until we get the records as to what typewriters they had on the base and/or we see the other documents we know Killian produced.

Dan Rather's best play was to admit forthrightly and apologetically he may have been conned. Now he's gambling it all on the chance that conservative magazines and FoxNews will forget this story by Monday.

I find that... unlikely.

Dan Rather Retirement Watch Update

At the tone, the Dan Rather Retirement Watch displays a time of

(bong)

11:44pm -- two minutes closer to midnight (retirement)

PowerLine Weighs In: Good stuff.

Summing up:

-- They think Rather is gone, too.

-- CBSNews isn't just standing by the documents; they've also put the kaibosh on the promised internal investigation.

-- As suspcted, we should keep our eyes on a certain corrupt Texas Democratic politician involved prominently in Dan Rather's hit-piece who shares the same initials as "Barry Bonds," "Betty Brant," or even "Bruce Banner." Powerline says he has an informer.

Sweet.

Even Joshua Micah Cougar Mellancamp Marshall Seems to Accept These are Forgeries: Read him if you want; but you'll burst a bloodvessel as he explains why the charges are nevertheless true even if the documents making those charges are proveably false. And he also claims that proportional-spaced typewriters were "widely" available in 1972, which doesn't jibe with what I've read.

But long story short-- he accepts that the documents are most likely fraudulent, and that the onus is on those producing the documents to authenticate them.

Since Joshua Micah Hezekiah Bucephalus Boutros-Boutros Marshall just cried uncle, that means it can only be a matter of time before his squawking parrot mimics him.

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (10)
Post contains 442 words, total size 3 kb.

Andrew Sullivan doesn't seem to be exhibiting the frenetic enthusiasm about this take-down of the Old Media -- perhaps the biggest take-down yet -- that he's shown regarding previous victories.

Is that because now he is politically aligned with the Old Media, just as they are both aligned politically with John Kerry?

Bad time to go all establishment, Sullivan. The counterculture is, as usual, having all the fun.

Slublog follows my lead in making this point, only he makes it first.

Fairness Watch: I added the "... I guess" to Sullivan's statement for effect. He didn't say that. His tone is unenthusiastic and his praise obligatory but not deeply felt; my "... I guess" is just there for humor/hyperbole.

Posted by: Ace at 09:02 AM | Comments (5)
Post contains 135 words, total size 1 kb.

Man, Windows really has come a long way since its first introduction in 1970.

Thanks to Nick S.

Posted by: Ace at 08:40 AM | Comments (1)
Post contains 46 words, total size 1 kb.