Nicholas F. Benton's White House Report:

It wasn't that Bush asked for it by permitting the venal "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" TV spots to attack Kerry last month. Rumors were abounding that the real reason the Bush forces were willing to risk a backlash with those controversial ads was because they knew it was only a matter of time before the truth came out about Bush's own soiled military record in the Vietnam war years.

Sure enough, the first shot over the bow came in yesterday's Boston Globe in a bombshell story headlined, "Bush Fell Short on Duty at Guard." It noted that the documentation of Bush's unmet pledges while in the Texas Air National Guard was provided in documents released by the White House last February but "overlooked until now" by the media.

The reality is more that both sides knew the explosive evidence was in those documents all along. Bush couldn't reveal it, for obvious reasons. And others sought not to call attention to it, until, that is, the appropriate time.

Therefore, the Bush camp's "swift boat" attacks were, in reality, a rear guard attempt to diminish the impact of the timely release of the real story of Bush's irresponsible (at best) playboy behavior in the Texas Guard while others were fighting heroic pitched battles in the jungles of Vietnam.

Now, the "Texans for Truth" TV ads are about to hit the airwaves, cunningly modeled on the "swift boat" ads but telling a much more damning story about Bush's so-called "wartime record."

The Globe report yesterday said that Bush "didn't meet the commitments, or face the punishment, the records show. The 1973 document has been overlooked in media accounts. The 1968 document received scant notice."

It went on to say, "A re-examination of the records by the Globe, along with interviews with military specialists who have reviewed regulations in that era, show that Bush's attendance at required training drills was so irregular that his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973 or 1974. But they did neither."

He also failed to fulfill signed obligations to show up for Guard service on weekends in 1968, and to locate to a new Guard unit in 1973, the Globe reported. In both cases, he agreed in advance that his failure to comply with his signed pledge would result in his being ordered to active duty, which, of course, he was not.

Aware of this damning evidence since the time of the first Democratic primaries in February, Democratic insiders kept the information "hush hush" while they stepped up efforts to ensure their party's nomination went to Vietnam combat hero Kerry.

Meanwhile, the Bush forces spent months struggling to come up with a counter-strategy, which took the form of last month's "swift boat" campaign. But the desperation move ran the risk of backfiring, and in the wake of what's about to come out, it appears that's exactly what will happen.

Namely, the Kerry forces can now credibly argue that it was the Bush people who started the fight, and they're going to finish it. "If you hadn't raised the issue of Vietnam, then maybe we wouldn't have either," they will contend.

Surely, the controversy aroused by the swift boat ads has significantly whetted the public appetite for a counterpunch. Had Vietnam never become such an issue, the Bush forces may have stood a better chance of minimizing the whole matter.

But then, the biggest problem for Bush in all this is the factual record.

Dick Cheney can shamelessly equate a vote for Kerry with an invitation to and escalation of terrorism, as he did this week, but that kind of fear mongering will resonate with some only as long as Democrats permit the Bush campaign to make the case for a seamless connection between the events of 9/11 and the decision to invade Iraq.

That was the "Big Lie" perpetrated at the GOP convention and the cornerstone of the campaign since. As Senator Graham's new book begins to do, the broken stitches beneath that cosmetically seamless connection is where anti-Bush forces need to dig and dig and dig.

Once the public begins to understand that the President not only misled the American people going into Iraq, but is continuing to mislead them with a "Big Lie" in his campaign now, then its susceptibility to outrageous statements like Cheney's this week will evaporate and be replaced by a righteous rage.