for factcheck.org I have to say that I like factcheck.org too, and I recommend them wholeheartedly, but I was very dissatisfied with their response to Michael Moore. My snarky letter went thusly:
To:Editor@FactCheck.org, appcdc@appcpenn.org
Subject: Calming down Michael Moore
Dear Editor
I'm having a little trouble figuring out why you bothered to tackle Michael Moore's deserter comment at all, since you offer no new evidence one way or another, and your article merely adds another layer of quotations to what is at heart a rhetorical question. That George Bush was "honorably discharged without ever being officially accused of desertion or being away without official leave," is beyond dispute. That he is innocent by law is beyond dispute. Unfortunately that does not prove that he was not AWOL for a long enough period to be considered a deserter per the UCMJ.
It is perfectly reasonable to dismiss as speculative an unproven assertion that person X committed crime Y. But it is fallacious to imply that person X did not commit or could not have commited crime Y simply because they were never charged. In a nutshell, you have mistaken inconclusive evidence for exculpatory evidence, in what I can only describe as an embarassingly undignified manner. Your lead says "Puh-lease!" as though the assertion were transparently ludicrous, yet the evidence you present as being dispositive is nothing of the sort. Specifically:
1) The fact that he was honorably discharged
As mentioned above this is a separate issue from whether he was in fact AWOL.
2) A quote from Maurice H. Udell
Again, the issue is not whether he was in the top 5% of flyers in the champagne squadron or whether he was accounted for during his training period. The issue is whether he was AWOL, when, and for how long.
3) A quote from his campaign spokesman Dan Bartlett
An official spokesperson repeating a candidate's assertion of innocence? Puh-Lease!
4) A quote from Bush himself
One would hardly expect him to say that he had not fulfilled his obligations, and one has to wonder why it's so difficult to get any detail at all from the man. Records, as you poignantly observe, are lacking for that period.
5) Quotes from two friends
Two friends (I can only assume that they are "non-partisan" friends, as the author seems very scrupulous about pointing out partisanship wherever it exists) worked with him in the Blount campaign, yet they do NOT assert that they had personal experience of Bush attending to his duties. They assert only that they knew he was enlisted and that he himself claimed to be attending to his duties. Hearsay regarding a plea of innocence, sourced from an interested party? Methinks the lady... ah never mind...
6) Another quote from Dan Bartlett
An official spokesperson repeating the candidate's assertion of innocence. I believe I'm seeing a pattern here.
7) Quote from George magazine
George asserts that Bush "did accumulate the days of service required of him for his ultimate honorable discharge." This is "begging the question" in its original sense. Whether this conclusion was reached on some other grounds besides the tautological premise that he was indeed honorably discharged is unclear. In any event, as I seem to find myself mentioning often, the honorable discharge is not, in itself, exculpatory. Perhaps you would also care to explain the "handwritten addendum" in the documents George used while you're at it.
8) Quote from NYT
The NYT asserts that "some of those concerns (about Bush's absence) may be unfounded." Indeed some of them may not, but as is the Grey Lady's habit, this damns with faint praise. What of the others? Why bother to mention this at all? There is still that seven month gap to be dealt with, and I believe desertion requires only a 30-day absence.
9) Quote from WaPo
I'm not quite sure what to say about this. It is also "safe to say" that Al Capone was a tax evader. See "damning with faint praise" above.
It would seem that the author of the article does not believe that G.W. Bush went AWOL, and is willing to use exclusively rhetorical devices, most notably the fallacy of "appeal to authority," to condescendingly suggest that the reader is foolish not to discard an hypothesis which has yet to be disproved. Have I overlooked in your article some final, empirical, exculpatory evidence that justifies your use of the expression "Puh-lease"? Or does the deadly seriousness of the charge that George Bush may have been a deserter (per the UCMJ) provide all the evidence you need to conclude that the charge cannot possibly be true?
I am sorry to have to say this, and I commend your efforts at remaining non-partisan, but you, like Peter Jennings and the editors of the Boston Globe, appear to have been hoodwinked into believing that a charge as serious as desertion cannot possibly be "credible" when leveled by a mere group of concerned citizen-journalists without public officials or major newspapers at their back. I would only remind you that the founders of this nation would almost certainly have disagreed.
hm. now I look at that I see that appcdc@appcpenn.org shoulda been a CC. oops...