Had a little fun with Photoshop!

[Jim Lane]

6. Well, not completely.

IIRC, Rather touted a document purporting to show that Bush's CO told him to take his physical by a specific date -- an order that was never actually given.

Of course, the important part, without that embellishment, was true -- that Bush had failed to take his physical and was therefore not cleared to fly. If Castro had sent his air force over to attack the Gulf Coast, Bush wouldn't have been able to participate in the defense.

One problem is that Bush's failure to take his physical was known before Rather's story. All Rather added were the embellishments from the documents, which are now generally believed to be false. His report, even had it turned out to be completely true, didn't add very much to what was already known about Bush's dereliction of duty.

That's why I personally believe that Rove had a hand in the whole thing. Rove got the documents out there, hoping that some reporter would get carried away by the hope of landing a scoop, and Rather went for it. The net result, as Rove had hoped, was that people focused on the falsity of Rather's additions to the story and were distracted from the truth of the important parts of the story.