I just love this link. This story should be taught in college journalism classes as a perfect example of using extreme spin to cover up a story that the reporter's personal politics can't handle. This is just classic Associated Press spin.
We've all seen, by now, the stories of these new records of Dubya's Air National Guard service supposedly found among personal records of Major Jerry Killian, one of his superiors. It's hard not to hear about them, considering most sites have been running them as headlines for the last week and 60 Minutes did a major 'expose' of them on their show Wednesday night.
One little problem: the records are fakes. Outright forgeries. As detailed here, they aren't even GOOD fakes. 60 Minutes just spent network TV time committing fraud against the President of the United States using forged military documents. Why didn't this make the news? Oh, it has! In the story linked above, in fact!
You'll notice that the headline isn't '60 Minutes Slanders President' or 'CBS Uses Forged Documents For Story', it's 'Bush Piloted Guard Trainers Before He Quit'.
The first four miniscule paragraphs of this non-story make it clear: Bush spent quite a lot of time in trainers as opposed to actual aircraft. Why, he even needed two passes to land his plane on two different occasions! Shocking, horrifying, scandalous accusations, of course.
The piece gets interesting around paragraph five, where they bring up in an offhanded sort of way that those memos everyone's up in arms about just might be fakes. They then proceed to discuss this for over a full page of text...but the headline talks about Bush and his trainers!
Man, you have just got to love the stench of desperation here. Both the media and the Democrats absolutely reek of it like a wino on his fourth day of a three-day binge. Considering that CBS got those memos from someone, I'm more than willing to bet that they came from the Kerry campaign. Who else would bother? Who else would care?
I suggest that this makes Watergate look like a minor social faux pas. This is a felony, possibly a series of felonies, and I'm quite sure it could be traced back to a certain French-looking Senator or his campaign. Will the media hold CBS to the fire? Will CBS roll on the source of the docs if the proof that they're fakes rises to the top of the news by sheer force of outrage on the part of the conservative Internet? Eh, doubtful.
My initial prediction still stands, however: the Kerry campaign will implode before election day, mark my words. You cannot have someone as singularly egotistical and self-centered as Kerry in a position where humility and the ability to take attacks is required. This guy gets angry over having to stand in line to rent snowboards (as recounted in the infamous Dave Barry piece) so he won't last ten seconds in the debates. It's only a matter of time. These forged documents just might be the fuse that lights the big bang. We can only hope it happens soon, it's going to be one hell of a good show.
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