On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 15:42:31 -0700, Jim Stewart
wrote:

Slashdot had a link to this site:

http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_s...are_quest.html

WTF?

Fort Worth Star Telegram - Sept 17, 2004

By Michael Hedges

Houston Chronicle


WASHINGTON - Bill Burkett, who has emerged as a possible CBS source
for disputed memos about President Bush's Guard service, has a long
history of making charges against Bush and the Texas National Guard.

But Burkett's allegations have changed over the years and have been
dismissed as baseless by former Guard colleagues, state legislators
and others.

Even Burkett has admitted that some of his allegations are false.

Burkett wrote a long indictment of Bush for a Web site in 2003 in
which he said he was personally ordered to "alter personnel records of
George W. Bush." In that article, Burkett said that when he refused he
was sent to Panama as punishment, where he contracted a disabling
disease.

But when asked about that charge by the Houston Chronicle in February,
Burkett said, "That statement was not accurate, that is overstated."

Burkett, 54, of Baird, has refused to return calls since the CBS
report on Bush's Guard service aired last week.

On Thursday, The Washington Post and The New York Times named Burkett
as a possible source for documents CBS used that experts have called
fakes. The documents were faxed from a Kinko's in Abilene, the closest
commercial copier to Burkett's home in Baird.

The CBS report used documents signed by since-deceased Texas Air
National Guard Lt. Col. Jerry Killian to suggest that Bush disobeyed a
direct order to take a flight physical in 1972.

If Burkett is the source of the CBS documents, he apparently must have
obtained them recently. In earlier interviews, he described years of
fruitless searching.

One month ago, in an essay posted on a progressive Web site, Burkett
theorized that Killian would have been a likely person to know more
about Bush's service. But, he conceded, "I have found no documentation
from LTC Killian's hand or staff that indicate that this unit was
involved in any complicit way to ... cover for the failures of 1Lt.
Bush." Burkett went on to say, "On the contrary, LTC Killian's remarks
are rare."

Several people with connections to the Texas National Guard
immediately suspected that Burkett was the source of the CBS report
last week and saw it as part of an ongoing vendetta against Bush and
the Guard.

If Burkett does prove to be the source of the documents, CBS got them
from a man with a well-established history of Bush loathing.

In an article Burkett wrote for the Internet last year, he compared
Bush to Hitler and Napoleon as one of "the three small men" who sought
to rule through tyranny. "Three small men who wanted to conquer and
vanquish," Burkett wrote. Burkett confirmed authorship of that article
in the February Chronicle interview.

That Burkett's story has changed or evolved over the years is a matter
of record.

During Bush's first White House run in 2000, Burkett told reporters
that he overheard both ends of a phone conversation between former
Texas Guard commander Gen. Daniel James III and Joe Allbaugh, Bush's
one-time Texas chief of staff, that he said occurred in the summer of
1997.

But that claim changed this year.

In February, Burkett said he witnessed documents from Bush's records
in a garbage can at a Guard base in Austin.