Bush National Guard Veterans for Truth

"Working on the premise that you can fool some of the people all of the time, a Bush supporter [Lt. Col. John Calhoun] who asserted that he saw Bush serve his National Guard duty in Alabama in 1972 returned this week to retell his already discredited story and was embraced by several news organizations that are not Fox News -- ABC News, CNN and the Associated Press." Eric Boehlert, Salon.com, Sept. 10, 2004

"Large rewards have been offered -- by cartoonist Garry Trudeau, among others -- to any former Guardsman who can prove that Bush showed up in Alabama to serve, yet nobody has yet claimed the cash prize."

"Fox News' lapse of basic journalistic due diligence was hardly out of character. In this case, however, ABC News, CNN and the A.P. fell down into the same league."

SourceWatch Resources

• Texans for Truth, a group of National Guard veterans, which asserts that Bush never showed up for duty in Alabama.

External Resources

• Salvador Peralta, Bush's Guard Service and the Right Wing's 60 Minutes Mythology, Progressive Trail, September 12, 2004: "Holding aside the journalistic credibility of the original sources for this story, ..., a cursory glance at the facts of the matter show that the entire right wing line is built on a foundation of decepton. The general line of the right wing attack machine is as follows: 'Don't deny the story outright. Just raise the possibility that the documents *might* be faked. This gives partisans something to latch onto and a talking point to start regurgitating in the right wing press. Repeat the lie often enough and some people will regard it as the truth'".