This whole concept is absurd. Does any clear thinking person actually thinks that Karl Rove had something to do with this? I am no fan of the DNC, but even I would never accuse them of being behind this, and it makes far more sense for some low-level DNC person to have cooked this up than Karl Rove.

If Rove were to have done this, he would have had access to actual documents to use as a guide. The font and type setting issues are only the first layer of problems with this. Even if an era type writer were used, these documents would suffer from inaccuracies. I suspect Rove or Joe Lockhart would have done a much more convincing job. Just because this works perfectly for the Republicans doesn't imply that they are behind it.

I believe that what truly happened is that someone cooked this up (maybe Burkett) and gave it to the DNC and CBS. Both parties were blinded by their eagerness to "nab" Bush and ran with it. A week prior to the airing (just as CBS reportedly began production of the final piece) the DNC launched their "Fortunate Son" campaign. Nice timing.

I don't think either side knew or suspected they had fake papers. They were blinded by their hatred for Bush into thinking "it must be true". It reminds me of all the crazy theories about the Clinton's knocking off adversaries. Because they "knew" it was true before they even had the fake papers, they never bothered looking into it and ignored sources that didn't backup what they said. For the DNC, this is disgraceful, but expected in the politics in 2004 (sadly). For CBS, it is inexcusable. They systematically threw out any comments by people who disputed the documents or by people who might be sympathetic to Bush. Yet they built their story on testimony from people who clearly had an axe to grind with Bush. A journalism student in junior high would have done a better job at balancing sources. Even to this day, they are referring to Burkett as a "former guardsman" and don't mention he was in the Army guard, not the Air Force or that he has long campaigned against Bush. A Google search shows even more.

So, like I said, their hatred blinded them into ignoring the facts. Kind of like how someone's hatred for Karl Rove would make them think that HE did all this with his pinky finger at the side of his mouth! Or maybe it's just hard for Democrats to accept the fact that someone on "their side" was dumb enough to do this? Who is more fool, the fool or the fool who follows the fool? I'll vote for CBS.