Not that this will convince anyone, but Lt. Col. Killian’s secretary says she didn’t believe in the CBS documents. She says, as has been hypothesized, that she would have typed the documents for him and that she doesn’t remember doing so. She was very specific about the typewriters she had available.
She also verified the content of the memos, and said that they accurately reflected Killian’s opinions about Bush.
This all jibes pretty well with the theory that Bill Burkett was the source of the memos. He believes he saw Bush’s records being purged back in 1997. He’s highly pissed off about the whole thing. I’m ready to believe that he made a stupid mistake, and that he recreated (or perhaps simply retyped) memos that summarize how Killian felt at the time.
This explains why the memos mesh with what is painfully obvious: Bush didn’t take his National Guard service too seriously, and he was willing to pull strings to make it easier on himself. It also explains the amazing coincidence that the line breaks in the memos fall exactly where Microsoft Word’s default line wrap algorithm would put them. I’ve liked the “forgeries based on real documents” explanation for a while, so perhaps I’m biased, but I think the Dallas News story linked above illuminates the entire thing quite nicely.
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I think that’s the funniest part of the whole ‘story’. The left believes the story, and is furious at the right for ignoring it. Not that the left generally views drinking, drugs and debauchery as a bad thing themselves, mind you, but it should be a useful weapon against Bush if those damned right-wingers would stop LYING to us! And themselves!
The punchline is that the right, to a large degree, accepts the story too. And they don’t care either.