[Lancey Howard]

The Democrats and their allies in the liberal newsrooms have understood for weeks that there is nothing to the AWOL allegations. Absolutely nothing. And all of them are chuckling to themselves in the tacit understanding that the whole thing was nothing but a carefully orchestrated smear tactic from the beginning. But that's not the point.

The point is to plant (subliminally or otherwise) into the minds of the great big barely-paying-attention chattering class across America that there are "questions" (he did something wrong, sleazy, unethical) about Bush's military service. The way to accomplish this is to keep asking the same questions (which have been answered countless times already) over and over and over again while feigning skepticism at any and all answers, evidence, documents, and testimony from eyewitness contemporaries. Then ask the same questions again. And again.

The Democrats understand that Peter Jennings will be there to help, as will Dan Rather, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. ad nauseum, to keep the notion alive that "questions remain" about Bush's service in the National Guard over thirty years ago.

The Democrats and their allies will keep this "story" percolating for as long as possible, until it is the template in the national psyche that Bush's military service was something less than honorable and certainly not heroic like Kerry's.

The way to defuse the story is to attack Kerry. Hard. Somehow put Kerry on the defensive. Unfortunately, it is may be too late to totally undo the damage.

[elfman2]

"The way to defuse the story is to attack Kerry. Hard. Somehow put Kerry on the defensive. "

I disagree. Attack the accusers, not necessarily Kerry. So Kerry’s behind it? Until that’s proven to America, a Kerry attack will only confirm the fence sitters’ questions that there may be something to it and that we need a distraction. We’d be the aggressors.

Attack the vicious allegations and accusers now, and attack Kerry’s record once he calls for civility. It’s a simple one two punch, a two step process. Anything else that I’m aware of is a bad decision.