squidpants

so it's time for a political screed. This whole CBS Bush Guard documents thing has gotten out of control, I think. I agree that some of the documents do appear to be fake, since they're in a font not used back then, have superscripts which most typewriters don't have, etc. However, now everybody is focusing on this John Burkett guy, who was in the National Guard when Bush was (not the baseball player who just retired), and who the Washington Post describes as having "History of Problems and of Attacking Bush." He does seem like he's a little overzealous, but what really has pissed me off is the fact that other people mentioned in the documents have said that even if these documents are fake, everything in them is true. The media (that I've seen, at least) seem to be giving this fact little play and are debating more about CBS's apology and how they got the fake documents. In fact, the recent articles I have seen aren't mentioning the people saying the contents are true at all. This makes me think it might be some kind of brilliant Republican scam.

Maybe it sounds a little crazy, but what better way to avoid talking about the President's Guard service problems than putting out fake documents saying he didn't serve, and then proving they are fake? The Bush people can say "look, those documents are fake!" and carp about that while avoiding the bigger issue, which is what's happening now. It also gets your average Joe to think that maybe Bush did serve honorably and that CBS has a liberal bias, since they ran the story. The documents were pretty obviously fake, with the font and the superscript, and they were written a little strangely - they sounded angry, and who titles a memo to yourself "CYA" (for "cover your ass")?

I mean, the way I see it, it's either a somewhat-crazy Burkett who makes his own badly forged documents to try to help the Democrats by proving something we already know to be true, or it's a brilliant trick by some Republicans. The way the story is playing out almost seems too good to be true for the Republicans.

According to the Post, Burkett won't say who he got the documents from to protect that person, and that he got them a Texas livestock show from an unkown person. Maybe he is protecting a Republican who gave him the documents knowing they were fake. However, Burkett thinks the Republican might get in trouble for betraying his party, so he's not saying who it is. If it does come out who provided them, and it's a Republican, they can just fire the guy.

Anyway, here's a few Post articles about it:

"Rather Admits 'Mistake in Judgment'"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35531-2004Sep20.html

"Questions Surround Man Who Provided Documents"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36908-2004Sep20.html

"The Bloggers' Moment"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35025-2004Sep20.html

"CBS and Memo" online chat transcript
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36291-2004Sep20.html