Who Can Really Say?

Have At It

Tim Blair has some fun with apologists for the authenticity of the documents produced by 60 Minutes last week.

But again, what strikes me about this debate is that those who say the documents are (or seem) fake have established a baseline for their argument by easily duplicating the document using a modern wordprocessing program. Others have tried and failed to replicate them using IBM's Selectric Composer, a machine unlikely to be found in a National Guard unit in any case. It is still said by some that certain models of IBM's Selectric typewriter or other typewriters could have been used. Well let's get with the program, folks. If an IBM Selectric (or some other machine of the era) can duplicate this document with the felicity of MS Word, then have at it -- let's see the reproduced document.

[Linked to the Beltway Traffic Jam.]

UPDATE: I should add that I'm not the first to challenge someone to reproduce the documents on a vintage machine.

Posted by Peter at September 13, 2004 07:19 PM