Dan Rather on Bias: The GOP Is Biased; He’s Without Fault

Bush Shirked His duty

The smoking gun memos were never proven to be "fakes." The experts hired by the show confirmed that the memos were consistent with the era and could have been produced at the relevant time, but they couldn't thoroughly authenticate them because they were copies. The kangaroo court hired by CBS after the fact was not able to debunk the documents, either. Moreover, the 60 Minutes broadcast confirmed yet again that Bush got preferential treatment to get into the National Guard, sloughed off his duties and received preferential treatment getting out of the National Guard, or did somebody fake the interview with Ben Barnes, who admitted he pulled the strings to get Bush into the Guard?

Not so fraudulent

If you completely remove the 12 1/2 minute 60 Minutes II broadcast, which mostly featured an interview with Ben Barnes, you are still left with a pile of evidence from other news investigations that Bush got special treatment to get into the Air Guard and even more special treatment in order to get an honorable discharge despite the official records showing huge gaps in his attendance record, in addition to his blowing off his physical for no good reason.

And the central foundations of the forgery charges, that proportional printing was an extremely rare and expensive proposition in the early 1970's and that the memos can be easily recreated with Microsoft Word, have turned out to be utter nonsense: *most* of the military memos that can be found on the Internet, along with similarly formatted personal letters from the the early 70's and before, are proportionally printed. It turns out that proportional printing was a common feature with pre-Selectric typewriters, as well as the early word processors; and only one of the 4 memos CBS used, the "CYA" one, can be even approximately recreated with modern Times Roman (and not that well) -- the rest vary from very bad to not even close, which is sort of what you would expect to get if the memos were created with an old "Times-like" or "Roman-like" font.

Good for Dan Rather that his lawsuit is drawing out damaging info regarding CBS behavior, including giving in to right wing demands.

Right Wing Creditibility.

Sam

You do a disservice to both Conservatives and the Republican Party itself, and i think to yourself, by trying to put spin on ANYTHING about the mis-deeds of the outgoing administration. The only option left for Conservatives at large is to admit as gracefully as is possible in the circumstance that this issue and "W" are both dead meat. The last eight years of abuse of power and corruption speak for themselves. All the right can and should do is "Let the dead bury the dead". The rest of us are ready to move on and if the Republican Party is unwilling to come along it will wither and die.

Oops - Fact Check!

Sorry Sam, you have (I'm sure accidentally) grossly misstated the facts here. Rather's report was far from "fraudulent" - every contention presented was thoroughly corroborated.

The issue was that one of the documents shown had been "reconstructed" based on interview evidence and presented as original. This was a serious journalistic breach to be sure, and it effectively destroyed Rather's career.

Unfortunately it also gave Bush apologists enough smoke to lay down diversionary cover for their guy. They were able to use it to change the argument away from the underlying story about Bush's preferential treatment - which just happened to be true.

In the spirit of journalistic integrity I'm sure you'll want to correct your piece.

- mike ball

http://whativelearnedsofar.com

Left, Right, and Center

The problem with Dam Dealey and many right wing Americans is that they consider anyone who is to the left of Ghengiz Khan to be a left wing socialist.

No doubt, Dan Rather and CBS made a foolish mistake in the newscast of September 2004. However the allegation that President Bush did receive preferential treatment while in the Texas Air National Guard has never been thoroughly investigated. Apparently he did get permission to go inactive during the Vietnam War so that he could work on a political campaign in Alabama.

Anyone interested in more on this subject should read Congressman Jim McDermott's speech "Missing in Action" in the House of Representatives April 27, 2004.

Did Air National Guard member George W. Bush avoid taking the required physical in order to avoid the possiblity that the resulting lab work would indicate some illegal substances in his system? As his erstwhile Secretary of Defense, Rummy, was wont to respond: "WHO KNOWS?!?!?"