If they find some "new" documents that are the "Real McCoy" who is going to buy it. So looks to me they only way for this to hold water is that Mary Mapes is actually an agent of Karl Rove just like McAweful said.
What is the point of this whole affair? Especially, if one decides that someone expected it might go this way. Looks to me more like the wheels falling off of a speeding car..
Frankly this whole thing stinks. I just doesn't make sense in time. There are so many arrows pointing in different directions. But there is such overwhelming sense of coordination .. this was to be a perfect storm. Even the Kitty Kelly book reinforced the themes of "Fortunate Son." It has been a theme for Kerry Campaign "The Hero" vs. "The Child of Privilige." This theme has run its course months and months and this all ties together all of the way back to the Dem Convention.
You can't believe anything these people say... but just like your kids when they are lying to you.. you can tease out the truth by piece by piece. This is a poser.
Another thing that strikes me, is that just like when Kerry was dissapointed in VietNam when folks of honor turned their back on him as he tried to play the hero, he lashed out against them, accusing them of all sorts of crimes. Now, he is repeating history, morphing from war hero to anti-war hero (he hopes) expecting that America will again humiliate ourselves.
This is just a supposition, not really up to the standards of FR, and is pieced together from lots of reading of other blogs over the last ten days - can't give an explicit hattip, but a general one to all blogs - and if I get Ouch'ed I will accept and correct.
I believe this was just Step One - the set-up.
It is established that Rather was to fly to Washington and present the memos to the WH, but couldn't get out of New York because of the weather. Instead the doc's were faxed to McClellan, who only had three hours to review them, so said nothing and faxed them out to the world.
It was expected by Rather that Bush or the WH would "deny" the veracity of the memos. Rather would show a clip of the denial.
Rather already had the tape of Marcel Malvey's (?) "authentication" of the signatures in the can.
Can you hear it? In 60 Minutes, eyebrow-raised tones, "Really, Mr. President? Well, that's not what our handwriting expert says." . . . [Cut to tape]
Bush would then be established as a liar. How many times did McAuliffe call Bush a liar the day after the show? A shirker and deserter? They wanted to goad him into a response - pure bully action.
Next came Kitty Kelley - Bush snorted Cocaine at Camp David . . . (breathlessly). They hoped for another denial.
Can you hear it? "Reallllly Mr. President?" Of course we now know she had no tape of the "interview" - and who knows what falsehood they had up their sleeves.
My guess - and it is pure speculation, is they really intended to run with the COCAINE story, escalating the FAKE order to report for a physical into a "fear of detection so skipped the physical" claim. That played the first day or two, then died away.
Imagine the media outrage - the last two days Kerry has used "the "irrational insistence" by Bush that everything is OK in Iraq" line - Kerry's "Bush is in a dream world" riff is out there TODAY! But it would have been He's not just out of touch, he's high on drugs!!
The story would have expanded from "Fortunate Son" to a fortunate, DEBAUCHED son who never really did stop abusing substances. After all, once an addict always an addict, right?
Didn't Babs shriek in June, "He could start drinking again tomorrow!!!?"
They might even have faked some "abortion" correspondence of some kind. That rumor has been floating around for years, too.
But to start the first step they had to have documents. I'm not sure we'll ever know why they used these obvious forgeries - maybe they really DID get snookered. Or maybe they've just convinced themselves that the doc's are real.
As a sidebar, I asked a very bright associate with real 'Nam experience why Kerry would EVER lead with that. My associate thinks that after all these years of lying about his heroism and altering his service record, Kerry has come to believe his own story. That's why he is so enraged over SBVFT - it is a mental illness - really, a delusion - and the deluded brain cannot accept exposure of the truth.
Fortunately, there never were any real documents. We know Pres. Bush earned enough service points to legitimately complete his service and obtain an Honorable Discharge. He did not miss a physical in March, 1972, nor did he disobey an order. None of the "charges" is worth an answer.
The question really shouldn't be, "Why did CBS run the story?" - we know they wanted to entrap the President. The question should be, "Why did they stonewall?" The answer has little to do with fear of admitting an error.
By simply not permitting an answer to these ridiculous charges, that evil Rove caused the perpetrators to become so enraged that they completely lost sight of their original objective, and of the risks they were taking by continuing. They, also, have deluded themselves into believing their own story.
A bully can NEVER accept it when you just walk away, can he? You really can't understand the bully's behavior; you walk away, waiting to be hit in the back; and it just doesn't make sense. Then when the bully really gets mad, when he really loses control, you turn and punch him in the nose - and HE runs away, denying that HE did anything to YOU. But the teacher in the corner saw the whole thing, and he's caught - denial is never so vehement as when it comes from the guilty.
The original story - the 60 Minutes set-up entrapment has been done hundreds of times. It isn't so irrational. The abject denial that the memos are forgeries is totally irrational, dangerous behavior.
Rather is a laughingstock and he knows it - his career will always have an asterisk next to it.
Rather is a bully who just got a bloody nose from somebody who he THINKS is smaller - but the teacher caught him in the set-up.
And he's pointing the finger at ANYBODY other than himself.
Mary gave it five years for the documents to surface, and called the Killian household just before she recommended to Danno that they should move on the 60W story.
Rove may well have seen this coming as he mused at the presumptive Kerry's early rantings. People are praying for him.
The whole Fortunate Son thing was a huge conspiracy kicked into high gear with the Kurintongites' arrival. Wolfson is the chief malefactor. They hoped the TANG stuff could be saved as a T-minus-six day DUI story, but other new material wasn't deemed meaty enough when it came up on the schedule. All the slime in the Anti-Bush books wasn't supposed to wash off nearly so quickly. And Kerry has totally muffed the response to the SBVT's.
Kerry is a bitter, spoiled boy who would prefer to be on vacation boinking rich women 90% of the time and poseur ing for the cameras the other 10%.
Working the VietNam angle is the only thing he knows how to do effectively.
HF