Live by the Slime...Die by the Appropriate Counterstrike. In other words, Suck on it Karl

From Froomkin:

After weeks in which the political discourse was nearly dominated by the scrutinizing of Sen. John F. Kerry's conduct in the Vietnam War era, President Bush now may find himself under the microscope and on the defensive for actions in his past.

Kerry supporters are actively questioning Bush's spotty record as a stateside National Guardsmen during the Vietnam War. A former senior politician in Texas is telling people he pulled strings to get Bush into the guard.

And an Associated Press investigation has concluded that key documents that should have been written to explain gaps in Bush's guard service are missing...

"Many of the group's assertions about Kerry have since been discredited, but a new group, Texans for Truth, has sprung up to question Bush's participation in his National Guard unit while in Alabama during the war.

"In a television advertisement to begin airing Friday, Bob Mintz, a lieutenant colonel in the Alabama Air National Guard during the time Bush was supposed to have been there in 1972, will say he never saw Bush at the base even though he looked for him, according to a spokeswoman for the group."

Michael Dobbs writes in The Washington Post: "A former senior politician from Texas has told close friends that he recommended George W. Bush for a pilot's slot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War because he was eager to 'collect chits' from an influential political family.

"The reported comments by former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes add fuel to a long-running controversy over how Bush got a slot in an outfit known as the 'Champagne Unit' because it included so many sons of prominent Texans. Friends said that Barnes had recorded an interview for the CBS program '60 Minutes' that will address the question of whether Bush pulled strings to evade being sent to Vietnam. . . .

The thing that sucks for Bush, of course, is that these allegations fill in massive gaps in the record for which there is no countering documentation or supportive witnesses, unlike the Swift Boat Liars:

Matt Kelley reports on the Associated Press's exhaustive research into Bush's National Guard records, and concludes: "Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts."

The AP filed a lawsuit two months ago demanding access to a microfilm copy of Bush's entire Texas Air National Guard personnel record from an archive in Austin. (See my Aug. 27 column for more details.) The government responded that it has released all records it can find.

"Challenging the government's declaration that no more documents exist, the AP identified five categories of records that should have been generated after Bush skipped his pilot's physical and missed five months of training," Kelley writes.

And finally, Froomkin gets even better:

Mary Jacoby also wrote in Salon last week about her interview with Linda Allison, the widow of Jimmy Allison, who in the spring of 1972 allegedly received a phone call from George H.W. Bush asking if Allison could find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son.

"Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton 'Red' Blount," Jacoby writes.

"In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas."

You've sowed Karl, now you and your client shall reap the whirlwind.