"..My questions are still serious, is this the travesty it appears to be or not?..."

In a word - yup. Definitely in travesty territory. What the "give'em a chance" brigade don't realize is that there is nothing new about claims like this - we've seen 'em all before, we've seen 'em debunked time and time again, and seen also that the debunking doesn't make a blind bit of difference to those who breathlessly see the claims as new and fresh. Osmanagic's thing is more of the same-old-same-old, with perhaps a larger political component than usual.

**weary sigh**