Posted on 09/14/2004 11:42:44 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Let the record show that the 2004 presidential election unofficially ended in New York City last month at the Republican convention.
Because since then, whenever I listen to John Kerry now, I smell something terrible. It's the smell of desperation - and it stinks worse than a rancid bottle of Heinz 57.
You wouldn't have to know that President Bush leads Kerry in the latest Associated Press poll, 51 percent to 46, to know these are desperate times for the Kerry camp. No, you simply have to turn the TV on and see what else Kerry's people are doing now to keep the focus of this race off of his senate record and what he plans to do if elected.
Their issue du jour is, once again, Bush's National Guard service. Now the documents from the late Col. Jerry Killian that question Bush's service appear to be forged. CBS and Dan Rather are sticking by the memos - despite the fact that they came to them by way of the Kerry campaign. And despite the fact that they aren't even actual documents at all - they're photocopies.
An independent document examiner interviewed for an Associated Press story said she was "virtually certain" that the documents were forged. Also in the story, Killian's son, former National Guard Capt. Gary Killian, "doubts" his father penned the memos. The personnel chief of Killian's unit, Rufus Martin, told the A.P.: "They looked to me like forgeries ... I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years."
The only ones that seem to vouch for the documents' authenticity are CBS and Rather, who stand to lose quite a bit of face if they are, indeed, fake.
Regardless of how this story plays out, the Kerry camp has made a conscious effort to focus on the service of these two men some 30 years ago as the basis for your consideration of him as the next president of the United States.
While I have the utmost respect for anyone who served our country in the military, I find it very hard to believe that most Americans will base their decision on what these men did or didn't do as soldiers 30 years ago. It certainly may play a part, but Kerry appears to think that's all it takes.
There he was last month, desperately clinging to that service record as if it was his last piece on the chess board, accusing Bush of being connected to the "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" ads. Immediately after the ads came out, nearly everyone condemned them, including Republican Sen. John McCain. The group's efforts were nearly dismissed as they struggled to get their message out to the mainstream media - that is until Kerry made the huge mistake of making it into a bigger issue and giving the vets all the press they'd ever need.
Kerry called for Bush to condemn the ads. Bush obliged, urging Kerry to join him in condemning all privately-funded campaign ads, or "527s." Apparently Kerry is only against the anti-Kerry "527" ads as I've yet to hear him condemn one of the biggest sources of those ads, MoveOn.org. Incidentally, a copycat group calling themselves Texans for the Truth recently received a six-figure donation from a sitcom writer so I doubt you'll hear Kerry calling for all "527" ads to disappear anytime soon.
Kerry has made it very clear that his plan was to bash Bush's service, play up his and walk away with a victory. Unfortunately for the senator, the American people appear to be a little too smart for that. And if he's trying to appeal to veterans and their families, he's fighting an uphill battle. In last week's AP-Ipsos poll, Bush held a 58 to 38 percent lead over Kerry among veterans and their families. It might be time for a new strategy.
After Kerry virtually ignored his senate record in favor of his Hollywood-aided war hero campaign at the Democratic convention, the Republicans made that senate record one of the centerpieces of theirs. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Democratic Sen. Zell Miller and Vice President Dick Cheney blasted away at Kerry's less than consistent record, allowing the president to focus on the issues and what he would do to improve the country in his next four years.
Every Democrat that intends to vote for Kerry should have to listen to the speech of their fellow Democrat, Sen. Miller's speech from the Republican convention. When one of your own threatens his legacy as a Democratic senator by crossing party lines to support a Republican president, how can you simply dismiss him? While he's been blasted and called a traitor to his party, Sen. Miller's decision to publicly support Bush is a breath of fresh air - especially in this time of non-existent bipartisanship.
That fresh air was soon interrupted by an unprecedented move that reeked of desperation as Kerry broke the unwritten rule of conventions by holding a rally just after Bush's acceptance speech. Kerry seized the moment by, what else, talking about military service. This time Cheney's record - or lack thereof - was the target. The attacks made little sense, seeing as his own vice presidential candidate, Sen. John Edwards, has no military record either.
The next several weeks will be vital for Kerry, especially in this area as he's in a neck and neck battle for Pennsylvania and is no longer a lock to win New Jersey. If all people remember of Kerry come Election Day is that he's a soldier "reporting for duty," he might want to see about lining up a job in the condiment industry.
It's not just about losing face. They are already a laughingstock. IMNHO, the real reason they refuse to concede the documents are fake is that they don't want to tell who gave them to them, namely the Kerry campaign. As long as they maintain the fiction that they believe they are real, they can claim to be ethically protecting a source. If they admit they are fakes, they are ethically required to name the source.
That it did. I thought that's what Kerry's midnight rally right after President Bush's convention speech was going to be about. I figured it was going to be a concession speech, rather than a boilerplate Democrat "doom and gloom - Two America's" speech.
"What I was finding was a lot of red flags," Emily Will told The Washington Post last night. She said she listed five concerns in an e-mail three days before last Wednesday's broadcast and that in a call to a producer the day before the program, "I repeated all my objections as strongly as I could." Will said she told the producer: "If you air the program on Wednesday, on Thursday you're going to have hundreds of document examiners raising the same questions."
In a separate telephone interview, Linda James said that she told CBS the documents "had problems" and that she had questioned "whether they were produced on a computer."
Asked whether CBS took her concerns seriously, James said: "Evidently not."
The concerns of both women were first reported by ABC News correspondent Brian Ross. A third document consultant, Marcel Matley, told The Post on Monday that although he vouched for the signature of Bush's former squadron commander, the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, there was "no way" he could authenticate Killian's purported memos because they were copies.
CBS continued to strongly defend the authenticity of the memos, which it used as evidence that Bush received favorable treatment while he was in the Texas Air National Guard………***
Anyone in possession of a document that's typed letterhead address is "P.O. Box 34567" should be more than a little suspicious about the validity of the rest of the document. The address itself raised a red flag for me personally.
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