{"id":1146,"date":"2004-09-16T07:45:10","date_gmt":"2004-09-16T11:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/09\/releasing_forged_documents\/"},"modified":"2004-09-16T07:45:10","modified_gmt":"2004-09-16T11:45:10","slug":"releasing_forged_documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/09\/releasing_forged_documents\/","title":{"rendered":"Releasing Forged Documents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back when 60 Minutes<\/i> aired its report featuring the disputed Bush National Guard memos, I pointed out<\/a> that the White House itself released copies of two of the documents<\/a>:<\/p>\n

After the broadcast, the White House, without comment, released to the news media two of the memos, one ordering Bush to report for his physical exam and the other suspending him from flight status.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the time I thought it was funny that the White House had these documents, since it claimed it had already released all that it had.
\nShortly thereafter, word came out that the White House had received said documents from CBS. Okay, no big deal. But then all the brouhaha about the document’s authenticity erupted. Even Laura Bush weighed in<\/a>, calling the documents apparent forgeries.
\nThis raises an interesting question<\/a>: if the documents were so clearly false, why did the White House release them without disputing their contents?<\/p>\n

Q Scott, on the National Guard documents on “60 Minutes,” the First Lady says she believes these are forgeries. The RNC has accused the Democratic Party of being the source of these documents. Knowing then what you know now, would you still have released those documents when you did?
\nMR. McCLELLAN: Well, that’s a hypothetical question, John. We received those documents from a major news organization. We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time. And in keeping with the spirit of releasing documents and being open about all the documents that we have, we made those documents available to everybody else so you could look at them yourselves. Since that time there have been a number of questions that have been raised about these documents and their authenticity. There continue to be questions raised. Those are serious issues; they ought to be looked into fully.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How about that–We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time.<\/i> If the White House thought the entire 60 Minutes<\/i> report was bogus, that would be a reason to question the authenticity of the documents, wouldn’t it? But tellingly, it didn’t dispute the substance of the report. So the entire debate this last week has not been about Bush’s military record–which by all accounts is lacking; instead it’s been about the paper trail.
\nYou can always count on the America media to get at the heart of an issue, huh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back when 60 Minutes aired its report featuring the disputed Bush National Guard memos, I pointed out that the White House itself released copies of two of the documents: After the broadcast, the White House, without comment, released to the news media two of the memos, one ordering Bush to report for his physical exam […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}