(Via LGF) After a suitable amount of strategic silence, the Poker Player-in-Chief raises his adversaries:
"There are a lot of questions about the documents and they need to be answered," Bush told the Union Leader newspaper of Manchester, New Hampshire, after a week in which some experts questioned whether the documents had been fabricated by those seeking to damage Bush in his re-election race.
"I think what needs to happen is people need to take a look at the documents, how they were created, and let the truth come out," Bush added.And, at an event in Charlotte, gets a little dig in to boot:
"One of the interesting things about a changing economy is that our workers are more productive than ever before. That means instead of using a hoe, you use a backhoe. Or instead of using, you know, a regular old standard typewriter, you use a computer. In other words, that's an example of becoming more productive." (Applause.)It’s past time to fold. However, if CBS and Dan Rather come clean and reveal their sources for the so-called Bush memos, who else will take a fall? Mark Steyn speculates as to why CBS won't just spill it.
So the question now is why won't Dan and Co. just admit their docs are crocks and let it go? On Wednesday, CBS News head honcho Andrew Heyward, in a slippery statement, announced that ''we established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate.'' Note that word: not ''genuine'' but ''accurate''…[SNIP]
Why has CBS News decided it would rather debauch its brand and treat its audience like morons than simply admit their hoax? [SNIP]
…once they admit the documents are fake, they can no longer claim ''journalistic ethics'' as an excuse to protect their source. There's no legal or First Amendment protection afforded to a man who peddles a fraud. You'd think CBS would be mad as hell to find whoever it was who stitched them up and made them look idiots. [SNIP]
The only reasonable conclusion is that the source -- or trail of sources -- is even more incriminating than the fake documents. Why else would Heyward and Rather allow the CBS news division to commit slow, public suicide?To be honest, I almost don’t want to know the answer.
UPDATE: Possible answer.
AUSTIN, Texas - A retired Texas [Army] National Guard official mentioned as a possible source for disputed documents about President Bush (news - web sites)'s service in the Guard said he passed along information to a former senator working with John Kerry (news - web sites)'s campaign.
In an Aug. 21 e-mail to a list of Texas Democrats, Bill Burkett said after getting through "seven layers of bureaucratic kids" in the Democrat's campaign, he talked with former Georgia senator Max Cleland about information that would counter criticism of Kerry's Vietnam War service. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the e-mail Saturday.
"I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. (Cleland) said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with," Burkett wrote.
