Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Did Kerry beach CBS in his attack on Bush?

We know that Kerry likes to beach his boat in the face of the enemy, or even when there is no enemy. Beaching a watercraft eliminates its tactical advantages: speed, manuverability, and the ability to bring all its guns to bear on the target.

Did the forged documents come from the Kerry campaign? If so it looks like Kerry just beached Dan Rather and CBS, and eliminated any tactical advantages CBS and its pro-Kerry bias might have brought him in these final days of the non-media blackout period of the campaign cycle. CBS' credibility is shot by its presenting of these forged documents, and Dan Rather's standing by their credibility has effectively torpedoed him and likewise made his credibility and any further influence he may have on viewers in the know dead in the water.

This Kerry counterattack, if that is where the documents came from, has resulted in the Swift Vets criticism of his war record and later activities being pushed to the background so it has been sucessful if that was its intent. It has also provided the Dems with wonderful moral equivalency talking points that are still being expounded even as the documents supporting them have unravelled: Bush was awol, the documents say so, therefore Kerry's claims about being in Cambodia, his medals and anti-war activity on his return don't matter, they're equally bad in this post-modern world.

But if the documents came from the Kerry campaign, then in order to get this result, Kerry effectively sacrificed CBS to do it.

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