I believe the document is fake because everything that has come from this administration has been faked and is a lie.
Writing that, you are correct. I have spent many years using the full Adobe Acrobat software and you have either the option to turn the document into a format that can be edited, or you can make the document "flat." The second choice renders any scan into a JPEG picture that is optimized and saved as a PDF file. The first allows a person to either edit using Acrobat or export to Word or other text editing software.
I think the place where people should investigate is the fonts. Turning the document into a form that can be edited uses the closest matching font internal to Acrobat. The "flat" type of document is a true picture of the copy that was scanned. If that copy was the original, or true copy of the original, the font would be that used back when the form was originally filled out since it is just a picture of the document.
The font and spacing issue was the the problem that ended up showing the infamous Bush documents to be fake and thus creating the downfall of Dan Rather.
That happens when you set your commands in Windows Word to "kerning on" ALL THE TIME.
Now, who does that? Well, how about a photocompositor operator. He's the kind of guy who will know that to get the document blocked up and optimize the use of margins, kerning is always best.
The Democrat operative who set up the deal with the AlGore crowd was a lawyer in family court in Nashville TN. Her husband got in touch with a professional photocompisition specialist working in a union shop somewhere in Portland OR.
The "husband" knew the individual who claimed he obtained the memos ~ and various other things ....
I don't think it's as professional in the Obama crowd. Too many folks there think computerization reached its apogee with the blackberry.
Of note, kerning was available on very large scale photocomposition systems before the 1970s ~ but it wasn't universally applicable, and with hot type the kerned block came in two flavors ~ two letters with no margins on a right or left face, smashed against each other, or simply a single letter block already filed in the system that would allow physical creation of the lede showing the letters smashed against/or even partly under/over each other.
In short, no military base doing Reserve training was likely to have had the equipment around to do hot lead print for ordinary memos going into a file. On the other hand, the memos showed all the hallmarks of Microsoft Word "kerning on". Microsoft Word didn't exist when George Bush was in the Air Force Reserve.