Indeed, if people start dishing dirt about these guys instead of offering factual refutations, it will pretty much serve as an admission that the charges are true.

-- Glenn Reynolds

A number of days into this major uproar in the blogosphere, I see that the dirt digging on Unfit for Command author Jerome Corsi and his web comments has morphed into national news:

The Kerry campaign called Corsi's Web chat postings disgusting.

"President Bush (news - web sites) should immediately condemn this sleazy book written by a virulent anti-Catholic bigot. It says something about the smear campaign against John Kerry that it has stooped to enlist a hatemonger," said campaign spokesman Chad Clanton.

Calls to the Bush-Cheney campaign were not immediately returned.

"Unfit for Command," which goes on sale Wednesday, accuses the Democratic presidential nominee of lying about his decorated wartime record and betraying comrades by returning from Vietnam and alleging widespread atrocities by U.S. troops.

The book claims that Kerry earned his Silver Star not in a barrage of enemy fire, but rather by killing a fleeing Viet Cong teenager. It also questions the three Purple Hearts that Kerry earned, saying that none was for serious injuries and two wounds were self-inflicted.

Even if we assume the author's web site comments are newsworthy, how are they relevant to a story he reported which has been verified independently? And how can one story be considered news without the other?

Here's the problem as I see it: the Cambodia lie is no longer about the book Unfit for Command. It has been independently verified from the Congressional Record, so it wouldn't matter if every other statement in the book were proven absolutely false and that both authors were shown to be convicted perjurers.

Attacking the book's author in a story which does not mention Cambodia is an incredibly lame maneuver.

I'd say it's moved from "pretty much" an admission to "very much." (Ever heard the phrase "lying before Congress"? I pretty much have.)

The Cambodia story has nothing to do with the author -- but everything to do with deliberate non-reporting.

Will they get away with it? And who will report the non-reporting?

1968 is getting to be more important than I thought it would be (albeit in pretty much another context).