underzealous

I'm starting to think more and more that if the 60 Minutes documents are indeed fake, as the right-wing conspiracy claims (through dubious, non-scientific means, of course), they were planted by a Rove operation. It makes perfect sense:

1) He wants to make the Dems look petty by trying to emulate the Swift Boat Liars.
2) He'd like to make it look like the Dems had everything to do with this, even though they didn't.
3) He wants to try to destroy the Dems' credibility in trying to impeach the president's credibility.
4) Can you think of a better way to distract people from the miserable failure by Bush in Iraq?

The reality is that Bush still can't account for where he was during those months, 60 Minutes or not. And the Bush administration keeps releasing random records from that era, even though they keep claiming they've already released everything, and nothing they ever release ever says anything to show that Bush was there.

Salon ran with this a few days ago:

But there is clear evidence confirming that the same conservative operatives who have been busily promoting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smears of Kerry are now engaged in pushing the story that CBS's "60 Minutes Weeknight Edition" aired forged documents in its Wednesday night report on Bush and the National Guard.

Creative Response Concepts, the Arlington, Va., Republican public relations firm run by former Pat Buchanan communications director Greg Mueller, with help from former Pat Robertson communications director Mike Russell, sent out a media advisory Thursday to hawk a right-wing news dispatch: "60 Minutes' Documents on Bush Might Be Fake." Creative Response Concepts has played a crucial role in hyping the inaccurate, secondhand Swift Boat allegations, with Russell serving as the group's official spokesman. A company spokesman could not be reached for comment.

If I remember correctly, the Bush campaign also had a release on the Killian documents way too quickly, which suggests they had some advance view of the story, although I don't remember the source on that. From what I can tell, the bread and butter right-wing has already started ignoring this story, claiming it's a forgery (I'm not talking about the bloggers here), despite no credible evidence either way. It's probably time to move on.