The weasels are starting to snap at each other: Ex-Guardsman: I Contacted Kerry Campaign.

AUSTIN, Texas - A retired Texas National Guard official mentioned as a possible source for disputed documents about President Bush’s service in the Guard said he passed along information to a former senator working with John Kerry’s campaign.

In an Aug. 21 e-mail to a list of Texas Democrats, Bill Burkett said after getting through “seven layers of bureaucratic kids” in the Democrat’s campaign, he talked with former Georgia senator Max Cleland about information that would counter criticism of Kerry’s Vietnam War service. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the e-mail Saturday.

“I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. (Cleland) said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with,” Burkett wrote.

Burkett, who lives just outside of Abilene, wrote that no one at the Kerry campaign called him back.

The e-mail was distributed to a Yahoo list of Texas Democrats. The site, which had about 570 members Saturday, is not affiliated with the state party.

Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke suggested collaboration between Burkett and the Kerry campaign. “The trail of connections is becoming increasingly clear,” he said.

Notice how the AP identifies Burkett as “a retired Texas National Guard official,” and fail to mention that he was Army National Guard. This could be significant, because as several have noted, some of the terminology in the forged documents is more consistent with Army usage than Air Force—and George Bush was in the Air National Guard.

I’m also very curious about those “seven layers of bureaucratic kids.” From the beginning I suspected the person who actually did the forging had to be so young that he or she had never used a typewriter, and assumed that things like inkjet printers and proportional typefaces and automatic word wrapping were just … like … always there, you know? Like the non-fat half-caf latté they were probably sipping as they typed away.

The response from the Kerry camp just reeks of desperation:

“The Kerry campaign had absolutely nothing to do with these documents, no ifs, ands, or buts,” spokesman David Wade said. “Jim Dyke inhabits the fantasy world of spin where George Bush pretends we haven’t lost millions of jobs and everything in Iraq is coming up roses. He’d be better served getting answers from the president, not hurling baseless attacks.”