Washington Post: Authenticity of Bush memos questioned

While I can understand the outrage of many Americans over George Bush's questionable record of service and the fact that he has largely gotten away with it, is it possible that someone has crossed the line from speaking the truth to manufacturing a lie?

New evidence cited in today's Washington Post seems to suggest that is indeed the case. The documents in question were aired as part of a CBS News investigative report, and are purportedly memoranda of Bush's commanding office while in the Air National Guard.

(These are, incidentally, not the same documents as form the basis for the recent Boston Globe article which I referenced here on Wednesday. Those documents have not been challenged, and bear Bush's own signature.)

Regarding the now-likely forgeries, the Post reports:

William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters evenly across the page, so that an 'i' uses as much space as an 'm.' In the CBS documents, by contrast, each letter uses a different amount of space.

While IBM had introduced an electric typewriter that used proportional spacing by the early 1970s, it was not widely used in government. In addition, Flynn said, the CBS documents appear to use proportional spacing both across and down the page, a relatively recent innovation. Other anomalies in the documents include the use of the superscripted letters 'th' in phrases such as '111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron,' Bush's unit.

'It would be nearly impossible for all this technology to have existed at that time,' said Flynn, who runs a document authentication company in Phoenix.

Other experts largely concurred. Phil Bouffard, a forensic document examiner from Cleveland, said the font used in the CBS documents appeared to be Times Roman, which is widely used by word-processing programs but was not common on typewriters.

If this is true, these documents represent a shameful attempt to manipulate a real issue into just more cannon fodder against the president. These documents hurt the cause of truth by casting the entire truth-seeking endeavor in a bleak light. If the CBS documents are frauds, their author should step forward at once, admit the deception, and face whatever fair and reasonable penalties may come for such reprehensible acts.

The quest for Bush's military records has its foundation in the desire for the truth to be known - NOT in the desire to see John Kerry elected.

While many who look for the truth of this matter may indeed believe that it points to John Kerry as the better man, that can never excuse prostituting the desire for the facts into an act of political fraud.