DougR,

You're wrong about the hypocrisy of trusting Dan Rather. The difference is that I already know a lot about him and his integrity. Indeed, americans have had countless opportunities to decide if we trust Dan Rather or "60 Minutes." He has been under intense scrutiny since he was a convention correspondent in the 1960s. The show has been at the forefront of "TV Magazine" journalism since the inception of the genre. So far, I can remember not one instance in which Rather's integrity or honesty has come into question--although some might have preceded my consciousness, as I am much younger than he. I can remember a few instances in which 60 Minutes got things wrong, and they always correct themselves promptly. In fact, they are one of the few such shows that re-run old stories and then say: since then, it has become clear that x, y and z. In other words, they take every opportunity to correct themsleves. Therefore, I can make a rational and informed decision to trust Dan Rather, regardless of his personal politics. And I can also make an informed decision that when 60 minutes says "we stand by our analysis" I can trust it, especially because I know that if they ARE wrong, they will come out and say it.

I had never heard of this Lines woman before. She is an obscure figure, not affiliated with (say) a well-known lab, police department or university. Thus, the public has had no opportunity to assess her work, and there is no paper trail that I can easily access. She works, apparently, for private clients. (Who her clients were, in this case, remains unknown).

Checking her out on the web, you find out only a few things about her: she is a document analyst, lives in Arizona, is a member of some forensic societies, and is a committed Republican donor. I found this to be interesting.   

By the way, new evidence has come to light in this as well. Lines's only justification for saying that this had to be a word-processed document was that the "th" was raised and shrunk to a smaller size, as a superscript. several problems:

(1) IBM made several typewriters in that era which could do this, which the Government often used. CBS has found IBM people and repair people to testify to this.

(2) Several unchallenged documents from Bush's records, released by the white house, also have this feature, so obviously these typewriters WERE used by various of his units.

(3) several of the documents do NOT have this feature, and some have it sometimes and don't have it other times. This sounds much more like a typewriter with a special "th" key (which the typist was unaccustomed to using) than like Word, which converts the th automatically to a superscript every time.

Given these facts, it almost seems as if this "document expert" was fully expecting to be debunked eventually.

As Bobert says, it's all about casting doubt, not about proving anything. Hopefully the doubt will last two months, or at least until the next orange alert.