The Bush "Guard memos" are forgeries!

[rexbo 104]

The Bush "Guard memos" are forgeries!

Some detailed analysis by an expert. I have yet to see such a thorough analysis proving that they are real.

First off, before I start getting a lot of the wrong kind of mail: I am not a fan of George Bush. But I am even less a fan of attempts to commit fraud, and particularly by a complete and utter failure of those we entrust to ensure that if the news is at least accurate. I know it is asking far too much to expect the news to be unbiased. But the people involved should not actually lie to us, or promulgate lies created by hoaxers, through their own incompetence.

There has been a lot of activity on the Internet recently concerning the forged CBS documents. I do not even dignify this statement with the traditional weasel-word “alleged”, because it takes approximately 30 seconds for anyone who is knowledgeable in the history of electronic document production to recognize this whole collection is certainly a forgery, and approximately five minutes to prove to anyone technically competent that the documents are a forgery. I was able to replicate two of the documents within a few minutes. At time I a writing this, CBS is stonewalling. They were hoaxed, pure and simple.  CBS failed to exercise anything even approximately like due diligence. I am not sure what sort of "expert" they called in to authenticate the document, but anything I say about his qualifications to judge digital typography is likely to be considered libelous (no matter how true they are) and I would not say them in print in a public forum.

I am one of the pioneers of electronic typesetting. I was doing work with computer typesetting technology in 1972 (it actually started in late 1969), and I personally created one of the earliest typesetting programs for what later became laser printers, but in 1970 when this work was first done, lasers were not part of the electronic printer technology (my way of expressing this is “I was working with laser printers before they had lasers”, which is only a mild stretch of the truth). We published a paper about our work (graphics, printer hardware, printer software, and typesetting) in one of the important professional journals of the time (D.R. Reddy, W. Broadley, L.D. Erman, R. Johnsson, J. Newcomer, G. Robertson, and J. Wright, "XCRIBL: A Hardcopy Scan Line Graphics System for Document Generation," Information Processing Letters (1972, pp.246-251)). I have been involved in many aspects of computer typography, including computer music typesetting (1987-1990). I have personally created computer fonts, and helped create programs that created computer fonts. At one time in my life, I was a certified Adobe PostScript developer, and could make laser printers practically stand up and tap dance. I have written about Microsoft Windows font technology in a book I co-authored, and taught courses in it. I therefore assert that I am a qualified expert in computer typography.

The probability that any technology in existence in 1972 would be capable of producing a document that is nearly pixel-compatible with Microsoft’s Times New Roman font and the formatting of Microsoft Word, and that such technology was in casual use at the Texas Air National Guard, is so vanishingly small as to be indistinguishable from zero.

[CarolinaTiger 0]

i would think that the burden would now lie w/ CBS for proving their authenticity, given all the credible hoopla that's been going around.

[rexbo 104]

i would think that the burden would now lie w/ CBS for proving their authenticity, given all the credible hoopla that's been going around.

Actually, I believe the burden was with CBS when they were first 'handed' the memos, before they even broke the story; and as we have seen, they blew it terribly...

[Tiger in Spain 0]

To what level has the mainstream media back stateside covered this scandal? By mainstream, I'm referring to the alphabet channels (NBC, ABC, etc). Over here in Europe, no one is saying anything about it, other than Fox News. My fear is Rather and whoever else is guilty of this fraud ( looking towards the DNC here) will walk away without a scratch simply because the networks will pull the plug on the story and allow it to die. These biased television newsreaders should be held accountable for their actions and heads should roll over crap like this.