Let me just add to my above post that there was a charge that the Air National Guard was an assignment only those with “special connections” could get into. But then how is it that Dick Gephart, who used every opportunity to remind voters of his humble family origins, was able to get into the Air National Guard?
Gephart was such an inconvenient candidate.
Huh? Bush was AWOL.
Let’s see if this film or anyone actually fingers the person who faked the document.
I mean Karl Rove or his lackeys. They sat down with their early 2000-era P.C., concocted the language for a fake National Guard document from the early 70’s, printed it out on their printer, ran it through a Xerox machine about ten times (so it looked “old”) and then got someone to call up Rather’s people at CBS? Then they planted the story (I think it was here on FR) that of course, there were no computer fonts back in the day.
Rove does this fake document trick all the time. It’s an old political hack bag of tricks. And it works because people forget this generational political knowledge in the heat of campaign passions.
But Rove had a problem in 04. It was an election year during Wartime, when John McCain (a veteran) was threatening to run with John Kerry (another veteran) and they were polling fourteen points higher than the Bush/Cheney ticket? (both non veterans)
Yeah. Karl Rove did a double-fake-out and created a document that was provably fake to get his boy out of trouble on the AWOL drunk questions.
Worked brilliantly. Gotta hand it to Rove. And also Steve Schmdit (Palin’s nemesis) who was working with Rove on that campaign that year.