Tim Blair

I've always thought that the forger was a young, out of control amatuer. It says a lot about CBS that a punk like that could scam them so easily.

Given that the two major suspects are the Kerry campaign/the Democratic Party and MoveOn, is it any wonder that the Kerryers are pointing fingers at MoveOn?

Uhm, I thought at least one high-ranking member of Kerry's team was working with/directing MoveOn.Org?!

Wasn't there a whole 'lawyer' flap recently when it was revealed that, unlike the Republicans whose lawyer was just passing limited advise to the SwiftVets, a Kerry 'advisor' was one of the people in charge of MoveOn.org?

I've been holding all the conspiracy theories about where the memos came from at arm's length, other than narrowing down the list of suspects to "somebody who hates Bush and has a copy of Word." But the MoveOn idea... boy, that's tempting.

Irrelevant aside: A few days ago, I saw a station wagon on the highway.

Shocking, but more follows!

This wagon had a giant MoveOnPAC printed sign saying "When women vote, Democrats win" in its rear window... effectively blocking any useful rear view for the driver.

This seems in some not quite definable way, to be telling.

(That and I don't recall that women have been prohibited from voting, or even simply didn't vote, even in elections where EvilBadMans (non-Democrats) won.

And one wonders what the sign was supposed to accomplish? Get Democrat women to vote? One imagines they're already going to. Get Republican women to vote Democrat? Unlikely.)

Well sending out Democratic operatives to point fingers in another direction is also "tempting".

"Good" "point."

Is Kerry finally making his move to throw the lefties under the bus? Admittedly. MoveOn.org makes a great candidate for that...

throw the lefties under the bus

Oh! Oh! Can I play?

Oh oh! Democratic infighting! Is it too late for MoveOn to help Ralph Nader get on a few more state ballots, now that somebody in the Democratic Party finally seems to realize they're being hijacked by the far-left? Or maybe Dean could make a surprise appearance as an independent candidate...

Check this out:

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/006674.html

I chuckled anyway.

If the Kerry Campaign wrote up this document and passed it on to CBS then it is as bad a scandal as the original Watergate break-in and Kerry is dead in the water...

Kerry would then have to withdraw or risk dragging whole Democratic tickets around the nation down with him. That's a lot of House & Senate seats not to mention governorships.

Therefore, it would only behoove Kerry and the Democratic Party to implicate Moveon.org and make them take the bullet that's surely coming.

The question is: will Moveon "do the right thing" and allow their brains to be blown out or will they fight the charge and further destroy the Kerry/Democrats chances?

I'd assume 'yes' but Clinton wouldn't resign and I believe that's what cost Al Gore his "walkover" victory.

It was a 527 that committed the fraud! We must stop all unregulated speech pertaining to politics!

Maybe it's off the point a little, but don't we remember when erstwhile MoveOn.org fundraiser Moby was urging leftists to lie to get Bush out of office?

Hell, his freaking campaign manager was foaming at the mouth and declaring it was time to go to the mattreses and unlimber the dirty tricks on the evil Republicans. (gnash, snarl)

As I commented somewhere at the time, that's kinda like jumping up and down and screaming "hit me!"...

The Dems tried it, I think, but were as incompetent at that as they are at most real-world situations.

"Our source also expressed deep frustration at what she called the 'hijacking of our campaign and our party by the amateurs at MoveOn.org.”

Is this DNC insider upset that the fraud was botched because it was not perpetuated by professionals? She must be miffed that billioniare Soros hasn't funded a better class of liars and cheaters to derail Bush's re-electon.

I guess that the Kerry campaign could ask MoveOn.org to back off. Senator Kerry asked the President to tell that to the Swift Boat Vets.

I must admit that MoveOn.org has the reputation of being psycho, and this whole business about the memos has that flavor, as well. Our leftist buddies have it in their mind (even as nice a person as Mara Liasson) that President Bush did SOMETHING wrong in relation to his Air National Guard service. That there is nothing wrong is too small a detail for them to bother with.

Should be interesting to witness all the finger pointing that will take place. Hopefully, the real forger will be unmasked. It's like a mystery story for me, I want to find out who did it.

I don't know who forged those documents, but it wasn't someone who was cold and calculating. Too sloppy. The person who forged the memos HATES Bush so much they were terribly sloppy. They weren't able to think through what they were doing.

I also think the person is comfortable with Bush and his stint in TANG. They knew enough about the subject to feel comfortable picking this as the subject of the forged memos.

It would have been easier, and more damaging, to fake something current to *prove* the allegations that Bush LIED. Fake some memo from the CIA, White House Staff, etc. to prove Bush *knew* there were no WMDs and LIED.

The reason they didn't go for something easier to forge (something from the present where MS Word is widely used), is because their knowledge is of Bush and TANG. They thought they knew the subject enough to make it believable. They just didn't take into account the differences between a memo produced by a typewriter vs. one produced by a computer in MS Word.

Seems to me that th forgery was done by someone who was young and very badly educated, at least in terms of the military. I wonder if this could be the work of Clinton wing of the party. They certainly don't wish to see a Kerry win.

Your obersvation concerning MoveOn and the Swiftboat veterans are valid. But MoveOn represents the WWP and its allies, certainly people average Americans have nothing in common with. The Swiftboat veterans are united by their contempt of a man who painted them as "baby killers" and consorted with the enemy during wartime. Most veterans can identify with them since they are motivated not by politics but against a man who belittled their honor and sacrifices.

Sigivald, at my CPR class the other day, which a couple of people hijacked to whine about Bush, one of my classmates said "If a woman was president, we wouldn't have any wars."

Um, yeah, we'd have tea parties instead. WTF?

The teacher (a woman), shut her up by saying "If we hadn't fought any wars, we wouldn't be here today. America exists because we fought for it."

If a woman was president, we wouldn't have any wars."

I love these people. They've never heard of Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Benazhir Butto...

Hello, my fake name is johnny and I am a troll. I don't have the brains to say anything useful or interesting so I just leave poop everywhere I go instead.

[The above message was altered and the commenter banned by the Management.]

Without wars, past & present, fate is twisted, and those who say we can live without them would never have been born.

However, I never served in combat, so perhaps I'm not allowed to hold this position.

What Dan Rathers needs to say is "that the authenticity of the document does not matter, it is the ... 'essential truth' of the document which matter!". :) Hey, its the times we live in.

Seriously though, the document might have been faked by some keen lefties from MoveOnOrg: The main thing is CBS run with them. The document examiners have refuted their authenticating of the documents. It doesn't look as if CBS had much grounds for saying the memo was real before hand, let alone trying to say so afterwords.

Sometimes you get to eat lobster and sometimes you should just eat crow.

As Robin Williams said, if women ran the world, there'd be no wars... just very intense negotiations about once every 30 days....