Nightline fumbles the ball

If you watched Nightline last night in the hope of gaining clarity on the Swiftvets controversy, you were sadly disappointed. Nightline interviewed no one from either side of the issue. Instead they chose to address the question, "Why are we still talking about Vietnam?"

It took thirty minutes to discuss an issue that could have been settled in one - because John Kerry made it an issue. Remember, it was the Kerry camp that brought up Bush's Air National Guard record lo those many months ago and allowed raving luntic Michael Moore to label Bush both AWOL and a traitor without so much as a peep about the scurrilousness of it all. It was Kerry who decided that his Vietnam service would be the centerpiece of the convention and of his campaign. Democrats used the press as a bully pulpit to compel Bush to release all his Guard records, which he did, as well as producing witnesses who placed him in Alabama when he said he was there.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Democrats are howling and madly flailing away at their opponents with ad hominem rather than facts. The facts the blogosphere is turning up look increasingly bad for the Kerry campaign. Sooner or later they will have to respond to the facts, and perhaps we will finally get the release of all the Kerry military records so we can finally resolve these issues once and for all.

But it doesn't look like the press will do the job this time. It will be left to bloggers to finish the story.

UPDATE: John O'Sullivan of the Chicago Sun-Times argues that this is a story the media cannot keep quiet on. We'll see. Via Instapundit.