Regarding the bogus Rather memos, some questions the CBS anchor might have insisted on answers to before his fall: (1) Where had the memos been during the many times the Guard story had been investigated during George Bush's political career?; (2) Were there other memos from the period that looked similar?; (3) Where were the originals?; and (4) Who - name and Social Security number - was the original source?
XXX
Talk about ideological arrogance: Just a week or so ago the pre-humbled Rather was saying:
(a) "My colleagues and I at '60 Minutes' made great efforts to authenticate these documents and to corroborate the story as best we could. . . . I think the public is smart enough to see from whom some of this criticism is coming and draw judgments about what the motivations are;."
(b) "Powerful and extremely well-financed forces are concentrating on questions about the documents because they can't deny the fundamental truth of the story. This is your basic fogging machine, which is set up to cloud the issue, to obscure the truth."
And (c) "I don't back down. I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces."
XXX
The Democrats have been all over Bush's Guard service like flies on honey. Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe insists: "It has become crystal clear that the president has lied to the American public about his military service." For his part, Bush has not reciprocated the rhetoric. Never mind that Kerry refuses to authorize the release of all his military records to the public. About Kerry's time in the military, President Bush - one of 19 presidents who served in the National Guard and received an honorable discharge - says, "I think Senator Kerry served admirably."
XXX
When Kerry returned from Vietnam and joined Jane Fonda on the peacenik ramparts, some of the things he said - about "war crimes" and "war criminals" in the U.S. military - are still reverberating. Less well known is this, from his early 1970s book "The New Soldier" (which Kerry will not authorize for re-publication): "We (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism."
XXX
Such statements against the anti-communist enterprise in Vietnam emboldened the enemy. Several years ago The Wall Street Journal carried this comment by Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese Army and received South Vietnam's unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975:
Support for the war from our rear was completely secure, while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the anti-war movement. Visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and would struggle along with us. . . . Those people represented the conscience of America - part of its war-making capability - and we turned that power in our favor.
XXX
Kerry's wife may have given part of the game away when she explained her three names: "My legal name is still Teresa Heinz. Teresa Heinz Kerry is my name - for politics."
XXX
"Source Denies Story of Drugs in Bush Book" read a recent headline in The New York Times. The ensuing news story noted that on page 575 of Kitty Kelley's anti-Bush tract, a man is quoted as saying Laura Bush in her college days at Southern Methodist University "not only smoked dope (marijuana) but she sold dope." The man - Robert Nash - said in a September 15 e-mail that (according to The Times) "his remarks were taken out of context" and "he had no firsthand information about any drug-related activity by Mrs. Bush."