Great summary of forgery debate
Hugh Hewitt provides an excellent summary of the forgery debate. He states (as I do) that it is possible the documents are legitimate, but consider:
* Lt Col Killian didn’t type;
*Lt Col Killian’s family says he did not maintain such records;
*Guard regulations prohibited the maintenance of such records;
*General Bobby Hodges didn’t vouch for the docs as CBS said he would;
*Colonel Buck Staudt –cited in the memos as pushing Killian to “sugarcoat” a Bush evaluation– had retired more than a year before the meo was allegedly written;
*Bloggers have been overwhelmed with e-mails from active duty and retire dmilitary who scoff at the form of the memos;
*Typewriters with proportional spacing were rare in ’72/3;
*Typewriters with superscripting capabilites were rare in ’72/3;
*Typewriters with perfect centering ability were non-existent ’72/3;
*Typewriters with the “kerning” function didn’t exist in ’72/3;
*Most experts range from certain to almost certain in their conclusions that the docs are not legit;
*CBS doesn’t have the “originals” and didn’t reveal that fact until pressure mounted;
*The fake docs are easily and exactly reproduced on modern word-processing equipment, underscoring the ease with which the bad forgery could have been produced contrasted with the near impossibility of Lt Colonel Killian’s producing them in 72/3;
*Lt Col Killian lacked motive to write and maintain such records;
*Despite intense media interest in the president’s TANG career that extends back at least four years, someone sat on these docs until seven weeks before the 2004 election and after the RNC convention;
*CBS has a history of obtaining docs damaging to the Bush Adminsitration which in all likelihood came from Democratic partisans;
*CBS won’t reveal its source;
I doubt even No Right Turn can go through that list and say that even on balance of probabilities (let alone beyond reasonable doubt) the document are legitimate.