The "forged" memos, the "third possibility," and the stupid criminal

[Skinner]

Like many of you, I've been extremely frustrated with how the media has completely ignored the substance of the allegations about Bush's National Guard Service (and the fact that none of these allegations have even been disputed by the White House), and instead has been focusing on the allegedly "forged" memos. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I want to talk through this with all of you to hear what you think.

It seems to me that there are exactly three plausible explanations for the memos:

#1 -- The memos are real. They were typed on a 60's/70's-era typewriter which had a superscript "th" and proportional spacing and the typeface Times New Roman.

#2 -- The memos were forged by a Kerry supporter to smear Bush (AKA: The "Democratic Dirty Tricks" scenario, AKA: "The Stupid Criminal Theory").

#3 -- The memos were forged by a Bush supporter to smear Kerry (AKA: The "Rove Dirty Tricks" scenario).

Currently, it seems that the media consensus is #2, The Democratic Dirty Tricks scenario. To be fair, they are not pointing the finger at the Democrats, but the underlying assumption of all this "forgery" talk is that it must have been a Kerry supporter who did it. After all, the memos smear Bush, right? Riiiiiight.

I do not know the truth. Unlike everyone else on the planet, I am not an expert on typewriters, fonts, etc. But I do have a brain in my head, and I've been thinking through all of these possibilities. And applying logic to the situation, I would argue that Scenario #2 is actually the least likely scenario. Allow me to explain.

Imagine that you are a Democrat who is trying to smear George W. Bush about his National Guard Service. You get this idea to write up fake memos, critical of Bush, and make them look like they're from the 1970's. What do you do? Think hard now. What do you do? The answer is obvious:

You find an old typewriter from the 1970s and you use that to type up the forged memos.

What is the last thing you would do? What would be the stupidest possible thing for a would-be forger to do? The stupidest thing to do would be to fire up Microsoft Word and type up a document using the default settings.

In order for the "Democratic Dirty Tricks" Scenario to be true, you have to believe that this is the stupidest criminal on the planet, who couldn't be bothered to find an old typewriter in the attic or on eBay -- preferably one without proportional spacing or a superscript "th". Instead you just type up the fake documents on Microsoft Word and send them through the copy machine a few times.

Think about it. It just doesn't add up. If you're trying to forge documents, this is not the way to do it. Unless, of course, you want to get caught.

In order for scenario #2 to be true, we have to be talking about the stupidest criminal ever. If you are enough of an evil genius to get the documents into the hands of Dan Rather, then you are probably smart enough to get yourself the best typewriter for the job.

So, where does that leave us?

Based on my explanation above, Option 2 is highly unlikely. Therefore, options 1 and 3 are much more plausible.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe in LIHOP or MIHOP, and I don't believe Wellstone was "wellstoned." I am a hard-core, dyed-in-the-wool skeptic. But here's what I believe about the memos:

Either they are real, or they were planted by Rove to change the subject and smear the other side. Remember, we're talking about a guy who very likely planted a bug in his own office to smear a political opponent.

Think about it. To borrow Donald Southerland's line from JFK: "Who benefited?"

Nobody is talking about the actual allegations against Bush. Instead, we're talking about the memos. And somehow, the fact that the memos are "discredited" is being used as an excuse to say that all the charges against Bush have been discredited.

If I were a young reporter trying to make a name for myself, I'd be focusing on option 3.

What say you?

ON EDIT: To be clear, the point of this post was not to argue that the documents are fake. The point of this post was to argue that of the three possibilities, the LEAST PLAUSIBLE is #2, which just happens to be the scenario that the media is pushing.