Compendium

A good rundown of the evidence that the documents presented by CBS and 60 Minutes which purport to shoe that Bush received special treatment in the TXANG are forgeries can be found in this post at QandO.

In order for these documents to be authentic, so many unlikely things would have had to happen (not least would be the use of a very expensive typewriter/typesetter) that the odds against it are astronomical. I'm convinced they are forgeries.

This brings up an interesting phenomenon that happens when people feel strongly about something. When presented with evidence that undermines your position, you tend to dismiss it or subject it to very close scrutiny, looking for indications that the evidence is fraudulent. If such indications are found, you tend to accept them without necessarily subjecting them to the same level of scrutiny.

Similarly, when presented with evidence that supports your position, you tend to accept that evidence without subjecting it to the same scrutiny as evidence that undermines your position receives. If there are indications that the evidence is fraudulent, you tend to dismiss it or attempt to provide counter-arguments that the evidence is indeed legitimate.

Both of these happened in this case. The left trumpeted these documents as the smoking gun of Bush's special treatment in the TXANG and accepted them as truth. The right smelled something fishy and took a closer look. When they found considerable evidence that these documents are fraudulent, the left attempted to find ways to discredit that evidence and went to ridiculous extremes to do it. This time, the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence (in my opinion) is on the side of the documents being forged. If the positions of the left and right had been reversed (i.e. documents purporting to prove that Kerry didn't deserve his Purple Hearts but which turn out to have been likely forged), then I think you would have seen the exact same thing in reverse.