Richard Nixon's actions during the 1972 campaign led to him getting the dubious distinction of being the only president to ever resign the presidency in disgrace.
Fast forward: 32 years later to this week to John Kerry, whose campaign appears to have taken a turn similar to Nixon's.
Trailing to Bush by 10 points in the wake of the Republican Convention, coupled with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Ads that have questioned his service in Vietnam, as well as news reports that showed his Anti-war testimony to the senate, in which accused (and admitted himself) to committing atrocities in Vietnam, were used by the Vietcong in an attempt to further demoralize tortured American POWs, Kerry needed something to jumpstart his suddenly-fledgling campaign.
So into CBS' offices crept a document that questioned Bush's service in the National Guard--and attempting to show that Bush enlisted in the National Guard to avoid going to Vietnam. The documents also were meant to show that Bush had disobeyed orders and lost his pilot status for not meeting performance standards.
Democrat-friendly Dan Rather, who, in the past, has been a Democrat fundraiser, rushed out the story on 60 Minutes II. CBS then posted the documents on its Web site, where it didn't take long for document experts to quickly debunk them and prove them as forgeries.
Here's a snippet from an AP story posted on CBSnews.com:
"[Lt. Col. Jerry] Killian's son, one of Killian's fellow officers and an independent document examiner questioned the memos.
"Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father [in whose name the forgery was made] and retired as a captain in 1991, said he doubted his father would have written an unsigned memo which said there was pressure to "sugar coat" Mr. Bush's performance review.
"'It just wouldn't happen,' he said. 'No officer in his right mind would write a memo like that.'
"The personnel chief in Killian's unit at the time also said he believes the documents are fake.
"'They looked to me like forgeries,' Rufus Martin told the Associated Press. 'I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years.' Killian died in 1984.
"Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software. Lines, a document expert and fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, pointed to a superscript — a smaller, raised "th" in "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" — as evidence indicating forgery.
"Microsoft Word automatically inserts superscripts in the same style as the two on the memos obtained by 60 Minutes, she said.
"'I'm virtually certain these were computer generated,' Lines said to the Associated Press after reviewing copies of the documents at her office in Paradise Valley, Ariz. She produced a nearly identical document using her computer's Microsoft Word software."
Additionally, the font used on the documents, Times New Roman, hadn't been created at the time the documents were issued.
Of this, another news source wrote: "Many experts say the memos' typeface, formatting, paragraph spacing and other attributes indicate that they were written on a modern-day personal computer, possibly using the Microsoft Word word-processing program — not on a 1970s typewriter. The documents were purportedly written in 1972 and 1973."
Clearly, this is a forgery.
The question remains: Who would want to forge these documents?
What isn't disputed is that these documents were given to CBS by the Democrats.
Democratic National Committe chairman Terry McAuliffe immediately rushed out to claim that they had been duped by the Republicans.
Yeah, right.
This is just typical of the Kerry campaign. Kerry, you might remember, blamed a secret service agent for causing him to fall when skiing, although the agent was nowhere near him. It appears the same thing is happening here.
Although the Republicans were nowhere near these documents before they aired on CBS, somehow, it was the GOP's fault. The only thing the GOP did, was distribute the documents to the press corps after the CBS program aired and before they learned the documents had been falsified.
But let's pretend for a minute that the Republicans somehow deceived the Democrats to take the documents.
Shouldn't the Democrats have acted responsibly and checked out the documents' authenticity? And shouldn't CBS have tried to establish the accuracy of the papers? Yes and yes. But both were just too anxious to air the story. Clearly, with how quickly the documents were debunked, neither the Democrats nor CBS were careful enough.
And that shows a great weakness, and a reason for us to not rely on either source as reliable in the future.
To me, it's clear the Democrat forged these documents. The Kerry campaign has been gasping in recent weeks because of questions over his Vietnam service. His last gasp for air was to drag down Bush into the same boat he was in.
Bush didn't go to Vietnam, but he was serving his country in the National Guard. Nor did he, like Kerry, give testimony that aided and abetted American killers in Vietnam.
It's a shame that Kerry's campaign did this. The good news is he was found out, and as more people learn about this, it will likely be the end of any chance he had to get to the White House.
Nixon's comrades broke into Democrat Headquarters. Breaking and entering. That was a crime, for which he rightly had to resign the presidency.
Kerry's comrades forged documents. Forged government/military documents. That also is a crime. What's the difference between Kerry and Nixon?
