Smeared by Fakes

CBS News performed a drive-by hit on President Bush's National Guard service by releasing several memos from a dead Texan that was Bush's superior officer in the TANG. Here are the memos: August 18 memo, May 19 memo, May 4 memo, and August 1 memo. Interestingly, the memos are typed in a proportional font, similar to something you'd find on a word processor or a webpage like this, but not in the National Guard of 1972. Plus, the signatures don't match up. CBS said it consulted with a handwriting expert, but that expert is a friend of Barnes, the very guy that is now making scurrilous allegations about Bush.

There's more to this story that needs to come out. In the end, I don't believe it will matter. If they're fake then it will matter because the folks at Moveon.org and Barnes' group in Texas will have this filth thrown back in their faces and splashed onto Kerry.


UPDATE: Powerline has more on this issue. It looks like a former Navy clerk has weighed in the issue of the fake memos, and provides some compelling, though anecdotal, reasons. Hopefully, this has legs.

UPDATE II: Rather than link to everything out there, here's a short list of the fallout:
Captain's Quarters
Powerline
QandO
QandO again

This is rather (pun intended) amusing.