CBS Docs - Forgeries or Not

[TexasUnderground]

I'm starting to be swayed by some of the arguments on here that the docs are legit, or at least, not MS-Word produced.

The bottom line is, until the originals come out, there won't be any real way to tell if the documents were forged or are authentic.

Disclaimer: I'm a techno-weenie, have a strong interest in fonts, but am by no means an "expert".

I think the spacing on the documents is very easy to reproduce. The line breaks match exactly with the line breaks with MS Word and 12 point font.

If you print out the CBS pdf and the MS-Word document, there is a size mismatch, but the size mismatch is corrected by faxing the Word document.

However, one problem I had was with the serifs bleeding: in the original PDF, the serifs have "bled" (my highly technical term), which has been attributed to the document being copied multiple times. The problem is, when I tried that, instead of getting bleeding, I got fading instead. And this was consistent with different intensity levels on the copier.

Then there are all the typewriter arguments, which, as my typewriter experience was mercifulyl brief and long ago, I'm not really familiar with.

So, I'm not convinced either way any more where I was convinced yesterday that the docs were forged. It would be nice though if CBS gets/releases the originals.

[cthrumatrix]

1. I'm sorry...Kerry is ON ISSUES...let Rove/media and spin dr's play

[Debi]

2. AAARRRGGHHH!!! Let's get back to work!!!!

eom

[Karenina]

27. Hey TexasUnderground,

why do you care more about fonts than that the secretary said the CONTENT of the docs IS ACCURATE????? Just wondering. :shrug:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x813551

[chiburb]

3. Just WHO is starting to sway you?

What shows are you watching or websites are you visiting? Specifics please?

[TexasUnderground]

13. Posters on here actually

Athena, and a couple of others (sorry, don't remember their names, just their points).

[chiburb]

16. I call BULLSHIT!

Athena's only post on this subject is:

"Your allegation that:
The "th" superscript written in the document is a smaller typeface than the rest of the document. There was no typewriter capable of doing this, they only had one fixed font size.
has been disproved. Your allegation was that there "was no typewriter capable of doing this", and people have shown that there were plenty such typewriters.

The burden of "proof" is back on you. Nobody has to show that the thing can be typed exactly. You, freeper, have to show that it could not have been typed that way. So far, you haven't done so.

And if someone did show that it can be done, you'd change your tune to "see, it can be done, it must have been forged." Freepers like you have no respect for truth, logic, and reason. You only accept evidence if it supports what you want to believe, and neglect, reject, or pretend not to notice evidence that disagrees with what you want to believe. "

From this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=817552

Do you want to try again? Or perhaps you meant "AlphaWolf" who is resting in the graveyard?

[TexasUnderground]

20. Call bullshit on what?

Me saying that I'm having trouble reproducing the documents, and thus I'm backtracking on my statement that I thought the documents were forged?

Me thinks you doth protest too much.

And, that's not Athena's only post on the subject, in fact, she had several replies to me. And somehow she managed to do so without calling me a freeper, or calling bullshit, but explain her position a logical, rational (and polite!) way, unlike you.

Pot = kettle.

Again, I'm coming clean on my attempts to reproduce the document, mr-hall-monitor-on-the-prowl-for-freepers.

I guess polite disagreement isn't allowed. So, do you accuse who disagrees with you as being a freeper, or is that a special pejorative reserved for people under a certain post count? Do I have to sing some hosana's and say some amens before my bonafides are accepted, or is it possible that maybe I can pose my point of view (which isn't a right wing one, btw) without being banished to the "graveyard", or is tolerance dead in the left as well as the right?

[chiburb]

22. LOL! Now I'm not worried about your "being swayed"

By what you've read! You obviously can't read!

My entire post, in which I accused you of Freeperism, is BY ATHENA! I didn't accuse you of anything!

Go back to study hall...

[TexasUnderground]

24. Ooops. Right you are.

Hangs head in shame.

[shrub chipper]

4. Who cares?

No one has contested their contents and most of us here are more concerned with the wrong headed war that the Chickenhawk has the US involved in now.

[michigandem2]

5. neither way it can be proved as forgeries..

they just can't prove it is...because it COULD Of been..NOBODY will ever know and who cares...Kerry is staying on message and this is what the repukes are discussing...we could care less...we all know he was AWOL...and that he is going down in November...

[AlCzervik]

6. yawn..another..."I'm worried" thread.

[newsguyatl]

7. SO many new posters here

start threads on this documents thing.

:shrug:

[Proud2BAmurkin]

8. The documents are authentic but the issue is stale now

Time to find out what AWOL was hiding when he skipped out of the Guard

[AuntPatsy]

9. Give it a REST , the questions you SHOULD be asking

yourself at this point is...

1. Did Bush shirk his NG duty and in doing so how can he expect us to believe he has a clue as to what honesty and integrity stands for...

2. Why are we still in Iraq when they clearly have no intention of steppping down and allowing us to take over without a fight and much blood spilled...

3. Why are you Mr Bush still offering the same promises that you used in running your last campaign, is it in fact because you have shown in your past history that you have yet to offer anything more than mere words and little action other than instituting a war that you yourself would not have fought?

Omg the list is endless, get on the ball and begin asking the real questions that matter....

Who the heck cares about fonts when people are dying?

[Maeve]

11. Agreed--we're being sidetracked by the wrong questions

The real issues of the memos, fake or real are:

Did Dubya get out of Vietnam by using his family's power and position to get a "safe" NG post? (well, duh!)

Did he then fail to take the required physical and blow off his committment to the NG? (looks like it--no contrary evidence)

Did he get an honorable discharge anyway, again thanks to his family's position? (afirmative)

Has he continued to twist the facts, not only of this "service" but of other parts of his public life? (yeppers)

Can we trust this bozo to have four more years of decisively leading this country off a cliff?

(ps--my favorite aunt's name is Patsy!)

[chiburb]

10. Suggestion for a new DU rule...

No starting a thread if you can't stick around for at least 5 minutes...

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TexasUnderground]

15. Uh

how is posting a mea culpa "disrupting". Tombstone yourself.

[shockingelk]

21. big apology if you're legit

but you don't seem to be trying very hard to pursue your inquiry honestly. If you are trying to be honest, please accept my apology and the clarifications of your misunderstandings below. If you're not trying to be honest, this should show you why red flags were raised in by mind:

You say you're trying to reproduce document degradation with a modern copier. Most of the degradation happened from a fax machine which is an entirely different type of degradation. Yet you also say you faxed the docs.

You state you won't be satisfied until originals are released. That's an argument used by people actively trying to avoid the indisputable proof that such docs could have been produced by the TANG in 1972: http://www.nobeliefs.com/hoax.htm

You're "starting to be swayed by some of the arguments on here that the docs are legit" ... that means until quite recently, you firmly believed they were forgeries. In other words, you find right-wing blogs more credible than major media.

Dunno, maybe there's a possibility it's coincidental you're coming off like someone who wants to do nothing but disrupt, in which case I'll ask this:

Why does it matter if CBS was taken in by forgeries? What does it change about the core of their story which has been known for years?

[chiburb]

23. You should have capitalized IF...n/t

[TexasUnderground]

25. I've responded to this in another thread

I don't think it matters concerning the facts if the documents are forged. The data is correct.

My position is that if the documents are proven to be forged, the damage that will cause is much greater than any benefit the documents give Kerry if the documents are legit. Meaning, at best it just proves a thrice already proven point. At worst, it will discredit other documents that might be leaked further out, like minutes from Cheney's "energy policy" meetings.

I don't find any blog with an agenda any more credible than is warranted with a strong dose of skepticism and harsh scrutiny.

As for the mainstream US media, very seldom to I find them credible. Much better to rely on the beeb.

[shockingelk]

26. All then I can say is this

You're giving right-wing blogs undeserved credibility.

Could the docs have been forged? Of course.

Is there any evidence they were forged? Absolutely not.

[TexasUnderground]

14. Sorry, had to go eat.

You know, that bodily function type thing.

[sam sarrha]

17. The copiers are different today than then.. the secretary that would have

typed that paper said she didnt type it.. but she said who ever did wrote it exactly like she would have. she said there were a lot of negatice discussions about *ush's actions and attitudes.. people were pissed off. she is 86

[lanparty]

28. Actually she said ....

... there were differences in how she would have wrote it.

But the fact that has validated the information is very interesting. The Freepers really can't quote her on this. You can't have it both ways. Quoting this lady would be a defacto endorsement of her statements saying the information is accurate.

Did Rove's ploy backfire??? Did he overlook the notion that a secretary would be able to testify to the veracity of the document and the information in it????

Was it a "Texan's for Truth"/Bill Burkett ploy to get the information out indirectly without posessing the original documents????

The possibility STILL exists that the documents are real. I'm sure the secretary took days off and no doubt Lt Col Killian had other typists at his disposal. Nothing so far shows that it's impossible for the documents to be produced using typewriters available in 1971. The IBM Executive remains the prime candidate to produce both small 'th', 'rd', 'st' characters as well as proportional fonts.

The documents themselves look COMPLETELY typewriterish. They aren't consistent with out-of-the-box Word laser printing. Some letters are raised, some are oversized. It IS NOT Times New Roman.

Now, you COULD fake this text. But then you have to muck around with the fonts to push letters around. The superscript 'tm' marks aren't at the right height for out-of-box. But if you highlight those characters, you can raise and lower them. Give it a try.

The fact that it LOOKS like Times New Roman is attributable to the "New Roman" part. It's a Times Roman based font. It could have come from ANYONE who made those little balls with all the characters on them.

Though, something tells me that the paper trail on the source will be more revealing than the tech talk. And the fact that the White House denies NOTHING tells us that they know it's true. They don't even CLAIM that the president served in Alabama. They just say he "remembers" having served in Alabama and dump a bunch of unrelated documents.

Finally, the White House Document dump contains documents with superscript 'th' characters. This shows us that either
a) The guard had typewriters that made superscript 'th' characters

b) The White House doctored some of the documents they released.

This brings up a couple possibilities
1) Karl Rove directed both forgeries and didn't think that detail would be noticed.
2) Someone else noticed Karl Roves fuckup and bundled their own forgeries along with damming information knowing the bloggers would pick over it in detail and indirectly blare Karl Rove's fucked up forgery over all their media appartus.

At this point, the White House is fucked either way. If the guard had no machines capable of making 'th' characters, than they falsified documents. If the White House backtracks and says that TANG DID have such equipment in common usage(to cover their document dump), they will implicitely endorse the Killian documents as being true.

They will have a VERY hard time worming out of this one. They are in a catch-22 now.

[npincus]

18. drop the subject and move on

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=814365

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. Don't push all the Forgery Talking Points while claiming otherwise

The obvious thing that shows the documents were NOT produced by a word processer but were produced by a typewriter is that the letters are not rigidly fixed in the vertical dimension, but their baselines vary as you scan across the lines of text. Also some letters are darker than others.

[lanparty]

29. Thats 100% fakeable ...

But it does prove that the Freepers aren't correct. This isn't "Times New Roman" font.

You can fake it by taking a font editing program and simply raising certain characters to give it that "typewriter" look. You can even magically chew off bits of virtual metal to make it look like worn strikers. You could also add edgy borders making it look like the old swing arm typewriters.

The only thing that is certain is that this document COULD have been produced using a couple of typewriters available in 1971. The secretary says she doesn't think she typed it, but the information is true.

I'd be curious if the secretary remembers what type of typewriter she used. It's possible that the document could have been typed by another secretary or Killian himself while she was off/away.

[MUSTANG_2004]

30. Typewriters she used

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/9663320.htm?1c

"She also noted that the typeface on the memos didn't match either of two typewriters she used during her tenure with the Guard - a mechanical Olympia, which was later replaced by an IBM Selectric."

[Pallas180]

31. I dont know. I'm not swayed. But I'm not new here or from Texas.

hmmmm?

So I sent this e mail to CBS

[e-mail]

Subject: DON'T CAVE IN

Dear Dan and CBS Execs:

Don't cave in to the pressure of the WH and their thugs.
If you do no American news agency will ever try to tell the truth of what is really going on in this country - and freedom,which is protected (or used to be) by the Fourth Estate, the press, will be dead.

Dan was right years ago, when he said "Courage". We're backing you.

Come visit us at www.DemocraticUnderground.com General Discussion.
We're 50,000 Democrats and Progressives who are very politically aware.

Anna Pallas
Florida