Posted on 09/15/2004 12:09:47 AM PDT by kattracks
DAN RATHER of CBS News appears to have been snookered by a source. As the evidence of fraud piles higher, Rather hunkers deeper into his defensive position and manages to look even more foolish.On “60 Minutes” last week, Rather showed several papers as alleged proof that President Bush used connections to skip some National Guard duty. Immediately after the story aired, some bloggers (a term for people who write Web logs, or journals) analyzed the papers and pronounced them fakes.
Most tellingly, blogger Charles Johnson at www.littlegreenfootballs.com, a widely read and respected conservative blog, produced an exact match of one of the CBS letters simply by typing it in Microsoft Word. The Washington Post also found that the documents appear to be forgeries. Not only are the fonts different from those used in 1973, but the letters contain factual inaccuracies.
The expert CBS said it used to authenticate the papers told The Post, “There’s no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them.”
CBS and Dan Rather got themselves into this mess by inverting a standard rule of journalism. Instead of presuming that things are not what they seem until they are proved to be, Rather and CBS assumption that the documents were authentic, then stubbornly held on to that belief when challenged.
We suspect that CBS and Rather failed to thoroughly screen the documents because their strong anti-Bush bias clouded their judgment. Now they are in the unenviable position of defending obviously fraudulent documents. And this embarrassment is compounded by the humiliation of having the fraud pointed out by amateurs.
To top it off, George Stephanopoulos, currently of ABC News and formerly of The Clinton administration, said on Friday, “A lot of Democrats suspect this was a set up, something set up by Republicans.” So we see that NH Democratic Party Chairman Kathy Sullivan is not the only one to spread unfounded rumors about Republicans.
We will have to wait to discover whether this was a sinister partisan plot or a poorly executed hoax by some well-connected pranksters. What we do know is that the dwindling credibility of CBS News has taken another serious blow.
And Boy Georgie claims to know the Clintons.
Is any major city newspaper or broadcast network defending CBS in this matter?
I hope he keeps drinking that source, it hasn't done much for his facial features however I sure like the results it has created in his thought process!
These forgeries are from MoveOn.org or somewhere even more deeply internal to the DNC and Kerry Campaign.
If you put what she said into context of the times.... George HW Bush was a minority party Congressman & a virtual carpetbagger to boot. I can not see how that would merit special treatment, though I'm sure there were people who might think his spot should have gone to someone with more merit, like someone connected to the correct party. Meanwhile, I believe there were some other guys there who had been helped to get in, so the things she's saying about W might very well have been said about some other guy.
My major curiosity is about the long term impact of this whole fiasco on the Tiffany network. Known left-leaning stalwarts like ABC, the Wash. Post, even the NY Times have come out against CBS. Will their image be irrevocably tarnished? "Stay tuned..."
I hear O'Reilly has lost his mind or is desperately trying to be contraversial.
The LA Times is on both sides, as usual.
OER=Officer Evaluation Report?
OETR=Officer Evaluation Training? Report?
LOL!!! The LA Times! I should of known, they really outted themselves during the Davis revolution. Those clowns must really like the taste of pie on their face.
I agree, OETR is a flaw in my theory. I think Burkett may have been the Moveon operative, in chatting up the secretary "about the old days in the TANG." Burkett passed her recollections (factoid filler) on to his Moveon contact, who incorporated them into the forged memos. The Moveon operative, seeking military-ese filler, found the incorrect OETR and used it.
Whatcha think?
LA Times has a great conservative cartoonist who doesn't pull any punches.
My husband has been showing them gleefully to me lately.
We're seeing the beginnings of the Left's defense strategy.
From what the secretary now says, she's nursing a class-warfare grudge against ALL of the rich boys who got into the TANG, not just Bush. Her venom is not particularly directed against him. That's why she remembers Stodges being involved, when he left 18 months prior to the period in question with Bush. Her recollections are of all of the "fortunate sons," not only Bush.
Coincidentally (not), the new Kerry Campaign theme 'Operation Fortunate Son' accuses 'W' of exactly the same thing as the forged documents do.
Someone posted last nite that OETR=Officer Evaluation Training? Report? was never used in the military, that there was no such abbreviation. This was an ex military person who posted about it.
Not MoveOn. No 527 could get a network to run with dubious docs. The Network would question why the 527 wasn't paying the network for an ad, as well as why the 527 didn't want *its* name on the smear.
This came from DNC or direct Kerry operatives to CBS.
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