In a long and ongoing discussion on (now proven) fabulist Private Beauchamp over at Winds of Change, the topic drifts to Rathergate.

However, one fake document which claimed things that were almost certainly true, was widely regarded to somehow prove they were false because that document itself was fake. Very twisted logic there.

I must have missed that. Maybe someone somewhere argued that this proved that Bush wasn’t AWOL, but I don’t recall ever seeing such an argument.

But then, I never had a strong opinion on whether or not Bush was AWOL (and still don’t). Furthermore, I never much cared, because Bush has always said that when he was young and stupid, he was young and stupid, and he (unlike John Kerry) wasn’t running on his youthful military record–he was running on his more-recent record as president.

Frankly, what was so funny to me about the thing was that the people who were pushing the “Bush is AWOL” story thought that it would damage him with his base, when in fact they were the only people who gave a rat’s patoot (and then only because of the political damage they thought it could do to their enemy, not because they have any intrinsic problems with soldiers going AWOL–many of them would probably laud that in general). It’s the same mentality that causes them to “out” gay Republicans.

What Rathergate proved to me was that some supposedly objective journalists were willing to fabricate, or overlook the fabrication of, documents to support their political agenda, just weeks before an election. It also proved to me that they were idiots. I think that there’s very sound logic behind that.