The Illuminated Donkey

Authenticity of Bush Memos Questioned.

Documents unearthed by CBS News that raise doubts about whether President Bush fulfilled his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard include several features suggesting that they were generated by a computer or word processor rather than a Vietnam War-era typewriter, experts said yesterday.[...]

[T]he 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. [...] Other anomalies in the documents include the use of the superscripted letters "th" in phrases such as "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron," Bush's unit.

Among the troubling features not mentioned in the article was the use of the term "ROTFL" in a passage describing Bush's piloting skill, as well as tearful testimony from the widow of an animated paperclip who allegedly helped Killian write the memo.

In related news, John Kerry today pledged that, if elected, he would withdraw all American troops from Vietnam by early 2006.