I'll bet the forger turns out to be a 20-something ex-Deaniac, Anybody-But-Bush volunteer for the Democractic party. Reason I'm thinking this is because it's probably someone who has ONLY ever worked on a computer, and has no experience using a typewriter. The spacing issues, the line-wrap, the centering, and the superscript are all things that someone who has worked with a typewriter knows how to deal with ... and know that they *must* be dealt with, because a typewriter won't do it for you. If, however, you were born and bred on a word processor and have always had that stuff done for you as an automatic default, then it won't even cross your mind that it might be an issue.

Yes, this is exactly the type of person who would make this kind of mistake, and not have the experience or maturity to realize what kind of mistake it is. As Rumsfeld would say, there are the things you don't know, and then there are the things you don't even know that you don't know.

Something else a 20-something ex-Deaniac techie nerd wouldn't know that he didn't know:

If I may add a couple cents from my own experience as a professional secretary from the days when it WAS a profession. Killian's widow (ignored and dissed by CBS) said her late husband couldn't type. This is not surprising, as that is what secretaries were for. I was an exec secretary in the mid 70's. I had the only IBM Executive typewriter in the department because I was writing business letters for the VP. It was a balky machine and I hated it with a passion. Even for the other clerks in the department, Selectrics were few because, well, you didn't just toss out good solid typewriters in those days just to get your hands on the latest geegaw.

IIRC, there was NO superscript key(s) on my Exec. and even while there was proportional typing, each letter still occupied only its own space. The machine might have been electric, but the keys were still fixed metal and the machine has no "idea" in what order letters will be typed.

One idiot on a thread in dementia swamps of DU was trying to say that "professional secretaries took pride in a well crafted letter" and thus s/he was trying to make the point that if one was on an IBM selectric, one would just :::kazaam::: pop out one ball for another to get something special.

Um. No. Professional secretaries did take pride in their work..not only for a well crafted letter, but one produced accurately and in a TIMELY MANNER. Yes, "popping" the Selectric ball out was no big deal. And if one was going to do a blockquote of math formula, one would change. But you would never do it in the middle of a line, and not for something as trivial as superscript. (Personally, I don't remember on any of the selectrics I used over the years, even with at least two or three font balls, anyone of them with a special super or subscript tiny character.) A professional business letter was one that looked as consistent throughout as possible. Even today, whether its producing ad copy (my dad has worked in print advertising for 40+ years) clean copy demands very very few changes in font.

Now, I just don't see either Killians secretary or clerk typist (Killian didn't know how to type himself) playing with changing out the font ball for a mere for the record memo.

More:

I learned how to type on a Selectric Typewriter in 1974 in 7th Grade, our JR. High School had 25 brand new ones, then in 1980 I went in the Army and worked in DivArty S-4 in the 101st Airborne Div at Ft. Campbell, we had manual typewriters only, after all, we had to take them to the field with us. I severely doubt the Air Force paid for electric typewriters in 1972 for Guard Units. The National Guard always and still does get the leftovers. Believe me, my military paperwork from the 80's don't look anything like these...

Now the question is: How did sophisticated, mature journalists and political campaign managers (assuming the Kerry campaign had something to do with this) allow something this amateurish to get past them? Well, if you think Bush is stupid and Republicans are ignorant sheeple . . . . But even those folks think Karl Rove is an Evil Genius, so . . . I give up.

Jeff Harrell found someone to type out the memo with an IBM Selectric Composer. This is a very expensive specialized machine, more of a typesetting machine for offset printing than a typewriter which would have been found in a typical office, but it is the only machine that existed in 1972 which could have produced all the features present in the memo. As you can see, even the Composer doesn't reproduce one of these memos as exactly as MS Word.

This memo also mentions "Staudt." That's "Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt" who "was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972," according to an order obtained by the Dallas Morning News. However, the memo which complains about being pressured by Staudt is dated August 17, 1973. (Staudt could have continued to influence Killian's actions after he left the Guard, but how likely is that?)

Meanwhile Killian's former commander says he was misled by CBS:

According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt." Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud".

CBS responds: ""We believed Col. Hodges the first time we spoke with him. We believe the documents to be genuine. We stand by our story and will continue to report on it."

Maybe if we all beliiiiieeeeve, Tinkerbell will live.

Mark Steyn notes the mainstream media's selective criteria of believability:

A few weeks ago, Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe was on PBS' ''Newshour'' explaining why the hundreds of swift boat veterans' allegations against John Kerry's conduct in Vietnam was unworthy of his attention. "The standard of clear and convincing evidence," he said, talking to Swiftvet John O'Neill as if he were a backward fourth-grader, ''is what keeps this story in the tabloids -- because it does not meet basic standards.''

Last week, we got a good idea of what Thomas Oliphant's ''basic standards'' are. . . ''This was too hot not to push,'' one producer told the American Spectator. Hundreds of living Swiftvets who've signed affidavits and are prepared to testify on camera -- that's way too cold to push; we'd want to fact-check that one thoroughly, till, say, midway through John Kerry's second term. But a handful of memos by one dead guy slipped to us by a Kerry campaign operative -- that meets ''basic standards'' and we gotta get it out there right away.

Apparently the Democratic National Committee is a little slow on the uptake.

Dan Rather Retirement Watch.

National Guardsmen say Bush's irregular service was pretty common.

"We worked around it. There's all kinds of situations ... that cause a person to go out of state for a period of time," said Ralph Bradley, 56, who served three years in Vietnam with the Air Force and 17 years with the Georgia Army National Guard. . . .
"You don't see Korean veterans or World War II veterans or Grenada veterans always talking about 'I served here and I served there,'" said Eubanks, 67, a Bush supporter. "I think those people in Vietnam were heros. I realize it was bad and it was hard on a lot of people, but it's over with.". . .
"A lot of guys don't serve for four or five months at a time. They've got other stuff going on. They'll make it up later on, or they just won't get paid. That's really no big deal to a lot of National Guard soldiers. I don't see how it's relevant now," said Wilding, who has served nearly 20 years as an Army Reservist and has been stationed just north of Baghdad with the 428th Transportation Company.
Frank Jones, 60, of Troy, N.Y., a Vietnam veteran and a Republican, said he's angered by reports that Bush got preferential treatment in the Texas Guard, but he said favoritism and politics were not surprising in the National Guard.

Satires are already beginning to appear. . . .
Yet more parodies.

UPDATE: I'm going to move on to other things, but most of the bloggers linked here are still pursuing Memogate and there's still lots of juicy stuff coming out. So I will leave you with this delicious visual comment from Allah.

UPDATE: Okay, one more, from Allah. The ultimate typography nerd analysis of the CBS documents (which, remember, no one has yet seen the originals of).

UPDATE: Shhhhhh . . . don't let the tin foil hat brigade find out about this . . .