"Sugar Coat" was perfect for their plan. Operation Fortunate Son was to begin with an attack on Bush's Guard service, an old story, but it would be given new legs with the forged documents. At this time the thrust of the RAT attacks was that Bush disobeyed a direct order to take a physical.
The implication was that Bush disobeyed because he was a heavy cocaine user - that's why the term "sugarcoated" was used. It was supposed to remind the dumb voters that Bush was snorting a white powder.
It was not a coincidence either that Kitty Kelley's book, specifically alleging more recent coke use, was scheduled to be debuted the following week. Remember she got three days on the Today show. I am convinced that if the Pajamhadeen had not fought the fake documents, Today would have given her an unquestioning platform to complete the smear.
Also at this same time the left wing rag, The Nation, had a hit piece specifically alleging that Bush was a heavy coke user in the late 60s and throughout the 70s, including his ANG time in AL.
Why would the RATs do all this? Most swing voters would not even have cared about all this 35 year old stuff. I think the real target of the smear was W's base: rural and evangelical voters. The RATs probably did polling and determined that while Christians could forgive past drinking, cocaine was something else. If the Christian vote could be "suppressed" (to use another RAT term), sKerry still might have a chance to win. At least that's how I see the strategery.
Hmmm... That's very interesting.
BTW, I asked the mods to remove #69 from this thread since the tread I had linked to was pulled.