Free Republic

George W Bush last night conceded for the first time that there were parallels between the current fighting in Iraq and the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War. Mr Bush has previously avoided the sensitive issue Mr Bush was asked in a television interview whether he agreed with a newspaper columnist that the current bloodshed in Iraq may be the equivalent to the 1968 Tet Offensive, generally considered a key turning point in the American war in Vietnam. “He could be right,” Mr Bush said. “There’s certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we’re heading into an election.”...

Walter Cronkite will introduce Katic Couric on the new CBS EVENING NEWS next week, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Cronkite is just one of many superstars, and broadcast legends, that will help the former TODAY host splash onto the nightly news scene. "It's going to be a who's who of Americana," a top CBS source said on Sunday. Cronkite will do the introduction of Couric on opening night only, the source said. CBS brass dismiss the suggestion that adding Cronkite is an attention-grabbing stunt. "This is a bold statement of continuity and 'trust,' a commitment to the quality of the...

No politician in America has a darker history with the waters off Martha's Vineyard than Senator Ted Kennedy. The Chappaquiddick Kid has been leading a three-year old battle to stop a windmill energy farm. A Boston company proposed building 130 wind turbines over a 24 square mile area off the Massachusetts coast. The wind turbines would provide three-quarters of Cape Cod's energy needs and nearly two percent for all of New England instead of relying on coal burning power plants. Greenpeace supported the idea. Yet big-time environmental liberals, the Chappaquiddick Kid, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and the befuddled Walter Cronkite oppose...

     In a talk with the editor of the liberal Texas Monthly magazine who hosts a monthly interview show on Texas PBS stations, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite uncorked some more liberal opinions. In praising the CBS-boosting, Joseph McCarthy-trashing movie Good Night and Good Luck, Cronkite liked how it reminded Americans that "one nut could endanger the democracy," was "locking up our democracy in a very dangerous way," and persecuting people who were "simply good Americans." When pressed to compare Vietnam and Iraq, Cronkite declared that the comparison was "almost exact."      On Thursday, the Poynter Institute's Romenesko Web site...

http://www.rightwinged.com/2006/01/cronkite_yaps_why_is_this_news.html Just wanting to share a photoshop I put up at my blog with ya'll... Something I was inspired to after the latest Cronkite rant.If you choose to display it here or elsewhere, please save your own copy or use this one (so I don't kill my bandwidth).... Enjoy! http://tinypic.com/kce0ix.jpg Rather: ...and if a fro..... if a camel had side pockets he'd carry an RPGCronkite: Dan, your stupid one liners make even less sense after you've Al Qaedized 'em up.Rather: Hey buddy, you don't tell me how to make an ass out of myself, and I won't tell you how...

Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whose 1968 conclusion that the Vietnam War was unwinnable keenly influenced public opinion then, said Sunday he'd say the same thing today about Iraq. "It's my belief that we should get out now," Cronkite said in a meeting with reporters. Now 89, the television journalist once known as "the most trusted man in America" has been off the "CBS Evening News" for nearly a quarter- century. He's still a CBS News employee, although he does little for them. Cronkite said one of his proudest moments came at the end of a 1968 documentary he made...

Some of you said a while back they should do this. You asked for it; you got it. All Access: Air America Adds "State Of Belief" For Sundays AIR AMERICA RADIO adds a new weekend show, "STATE OF BELIEF," hosted by INTERFAITH ALLIANCE leader Rev. Dr. C. WELTON GADDY, for SUNDAYS at 5p ET beginning JANUARY 15. GADDY's first guest will be WALTER CRONKITE; the show will offer discussion of politics and religion. And that's the way it is. -- Al Franken Off to Lake Wobegon Al Franken - who talks Noo Yawk but says he's from Minnesota - has...

LEGENDARY anchorman Walter Cronkite is being pushed round town in a wheelchair, propelled by his girlfriend Joanna Simon, sister of Carly. But there's no emergency; a spokeswoman says Cronkite, 89, has been ordered to rest while he waits for a skin graft to heal on the back of his leg, following an operation to fix an Achilles tendon he injured several years ago playing tennis. The indomitable newsman will be in Vienna in the new year for WNET's annual "Great Performances" spectacular regardless.

'Dumb' remark Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, in an appearance Friday on CNN's "Larry King Live," said Americans are too dumb to vote for the right candidates. "We're an ignorant nation right now," Mr. Cronkite said. "We're not really capable, I do not think the majority of our people, of making the decisions that have to be made at election time and particularly in the selection of their legislatures and their Congress and the presidency, of course." Mr. Cronkite added: "I don't think we're bright enough to do the job that would preserve our democracy, our republic. I think we're...

Saying that the Joint Chiefs and combatant commanders “strongly support” ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has stated that the measure “ensures the ability of the US Armed Forces to operate freely across the vast expanse of the world’s oceans under the authority of widely recognized and accepted international law.” [1] But would our military leaders support the treaty if they knew that the activists behind it were also instrumental in promoting the International Criminal Court (ICC), which could prosecute and imprison American troops and military...

Thirty years ago, Americans were transfixed by the chaotic images flickering across their TV screens. Hordes of frantic South Vietnamese men, women and children desperately clinging to the U.S. Embassy fence in Saigon, pleading for escape. Chinook helicopters teetering precariously on the Embassy roof, evacuating the last Americans even as North Vietnamese Communist Army tanks rolled into the outskirts of the city. Huey gunships, the very symbol of American combat power in Vietnam, commandeered by fleeing South Vietnamese Army pilots, either ditched into the sea or pushed overboard from the decks of crowded American aircraft carriers. If the film footage...

Friends of retiring anchorman Dan Rather are firing back at some of his CBS News critics - and among the targets is the elder statesman-anchorman once known as "the most trusted man in America," Walter Cronkite. Speaking anonymously, one Rather loyalist tells the Washington Post's Tom Shales that Cronkite is "a codgerly old ass . . . He stayed alive just so he could see this moment." Story Continues Below Last week Cronkite blasted Rather, saying of his interim replacement Bob Schieffer: "I would like to have seen him there a long time ago." Rather "gave the impression of playing...

Emptying out his cubbyhole office in the CBS News building on West 57th Street in New York, wading through stacks and boxes of memorabilia accumulated over the years, Dan Rather came upon a piece of framed embroidery made and sent to him a couple decades ago by a nun who was, one might say, among the faithful -- a regular and loyal viewer.

NEW YORK (AP) - Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather's predecessor at the "CBS Evening News," said Monday that Rather's replacement by Bob Schieffer was overdue. Rather, 73, ends his run as evening news anchor Wednesday, exactly 24 years after replacing Cronkite. Schieffer, the "Face the Nation" host, will be a temporary fill-in until CBS decides on a permanent replacement. Cronkite called Schieffer "one of the great television journalists of our time." "Although Dan did a fine job, I would have liked to have seen (Schieffer) there a long time ago," Cronkite said during an interview on CNN. "He would have given...

Embattled CBS anchorman Dan Rather is set to finally bow out on Wednesday. For a bunch of folks---that can't get here soon enough. In the last couple of weeks, even CBS people have turned on him, claiming they don't even watch the CBS Evening News. --"He's not as easy to watch as [Peter] Jennings or [Tom] Brokaw," said "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace in this week's The New Yorker magazine. -- Legendary anchor Walter Cronkite, who recommended Rather for a job years ago, told the magazine he preferred watching Brokaw - who retired last year - because Rather looked like...

Andy Rooney indicated Thursday that CBS may once again be considering airing a one-hour nightly newscast. Appearing on Larry King's CNN program, Rooney said: ‘Most of the American public gets their news from television. And if we're going to have an informed electorate, we have to have good television news. I think it's vital that we have it. I keep waiting for some hero to come in and say, look, I'm going to give them the money. We're going to run this network, we're going to make all our money off programming and we can make plenty of it that...

Rather deserves respect By Ray Richmond There was a telling moment in a telephone interview I conducted with Dan Rather a little more than a year ago in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of CBS. "I'm not a large part of the legacy (of CBS)," Rather offered. "But whatever part of it that I am and have been, I'm very proud of. At the same time, I'm humbled by the fact that I know that I'm undeserving. I know that I'm still working to be worthy of it." Anyone who knew Rather will tell you this wasn't false modesty. He...

"If Walter Cronkite was around today," USA Today founder Al Neuharth proclaimed in a speech in South Dakota last week, "I think John Kerry would be President" because of "the trust the people in Middle America had in Cronkite, when he returned from Vietnam opposed to the war, public opposition soon followed." As recounted by the Daily Republic in Mitchell, South Dakota, in addition to boasting of the influence of Cronkite's bias, Neuharth "said he thought if McGovern had won the presidency in 1972, U.S. troops would have pulled out from Vietnam a lot sooner with a lot fewer casualties,...

Walter Cronkite, who once remarked that Dan Rather, his successor as anchor of the CBS Evening News, should have been fired after he walked off the set in 1987 when his newscast was delayed by a tennis broadcast, has enlarged upon his previous criticism of Rather's discredited report on George W. Bush's National Guard service. Asked in an interview in the upcoming edition of Details whether he had ever come close to making a mistake like Rather's, Cronkite responded: "Fortunately, I don't know about the close times, and I'm sure there must have been some. But I never had a...

Former CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape. Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an interview on CNN. Cronkite said he is "inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing." Interviewer Larry King did not ask Cronkite to elaborate on the provocative election eve accusation. Developing...