I truly don't think President Bush is being given good advice on this national guard story. When a news org is basing it on documents, which the President knows _have_ to be false because he _knows_ he was never suspended from the guard, the first thing his spokesmen should have said is precisely that the President was never suspended and therefore these documents absolutely couldn't be genuine. Now the 'Rats are making this lack of denial a big issue. This non-denial, according to them, indicates that the Bush camp thinks the documents could have been real and thus there must be something accurate in the story. The President must give this flap the final kick it deserves. And Pronto, because you can rest assured that the left wing media will keep bringing it up, may be even in the debates, and it could (I think it is) have an effect. Skerry based his candidacy on his Vietnam record, and the Swift Boat attacks really hurt him. This isn't an attack on the President's military service at all -- nobody but the lefties cares about that -- it's an attack on his honesty, which they want to tarnish. And he should hammer it down now as hard as he can.
In my opinion, this would have been exactly the wrong approach to take. The only answer due a slanderous accusation such as "Do you still beat your wife?" is stony silence.