Good evening, Frank!
Here's what we DO KNOW about the Bush National Guard story.
1. This story has been brought up in four different years (probably multiple times in each year): 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2004, when Bush was elected and re-elected as Texas Governor and US President respectively.
2. Bush has signed his Form 180, which releases his privacy interest to all his military files (something Kerry did not do, FWIW.) The Pentagon was sued by some news organizations because they hadn't been able to find a few remaining documents. If you want to believe in crackpot conspiracy theories that the Pentagon was "hiding" something on behalf of Bush, go right ahead. But it most likely was simply what the Pentagon claimed.
3. Dan Rather did a report on Bush in which the damning evidence (that he had been AWOL and that the commander had been ordered to cover things up) consisted of forged documents. We aren't talking about "possibly forged" or "probably forged" documents, we are talking about "these were forgeries and amatuer-hour efforts at that." (If you want the full details, you can google "Rathergate" or "forged Bush documents" or "forged Bush National Guard" or "forgery" in the previous two searches. It's really not that esoteric--especially if you remember using a typewriter and spent any time dealing with a typesetting program that's more than about 10 years old. But being able to run Microsoft Word, should really be about all you really need.)
4. CBS had shown a few of the documents to a couple of document experts. One document expert had noted several problems with them.(like a superscript "th") and warned CBS not to run with them without further study. Another had only been asked to verify the signature (on an obviously copied and faxed document for which CBS did not have an original). The commanding officer (of the Colonel who supposedly wrote the memos) had the memo read to him over the phone and said something like, "If that's what he wrote, then that must have been what he thought." CBS "paraphrased" this comment to mean that he had vouched for their authenticity.
5. Somewhere in the mix, someone at CBS questioned running with the story at which point, Dan Rather "personally vouched for" the authenticity of the documents.
6. The top guy at the CBS News division (Les Moonves?) put together the "investigation" and said that the results of the investigation were not going to be released until "after the election" because he did not want to release anything that might "affect the election."
Them's the facts. Now, knowing all of this, there are a few conclusions we can draw.
The best we can say about Dan Rather (and any of his co-workers who put their doubts aside) is that he was so eager to run a story that put Bush in a bad light that he allowed his WISH that the documents were genuine to affect his news judgement. The other possibility is that he didn't care or worse, knew they were false and ran with the story anyway.
The final thing is that CBS, as an organization has obviously taken sides. This was a story which could very likely have had an effect on the election (and for all we know, it may have--remember the old saw about a lie traveling around the world before the truth can lace its shoes.) Yet, CBS didn't want to release the results of the investigation because it might affect the election. So apparently affecting the election to throw it Kerry's way was OK, but when there might be a source in the Kerry campaign's dirty tricks department--which would throw it Bush's way, then CBS wants to stay mum. Certainly, if ratings were an issue, they would have wanted that info before the election when people would be most interested.
Lowell C. Savage It's the freedom, stupid! Gun control: tyrants' tool, fools' folly.
At 07:09 PM 11/26/2004, you wrote:
Good evening again, Dave!
Dave Laird wrote to Frank Reichert...
> Frank Reichert wrote: > > Some of that certainly may be true, however, apparently this time > > around it appears that 'some of his bosses' may have disagreed > > strongly with Dan Rather's content or take on the Shrub's > > National Guard documents. I believe perhaps the story may have > > been poorly researched, but it should have been something > > certainly important enough to air as national news.
To which, you replied: > On the other hand, it was a VITAL story because it nearly cost George W. > Bush the Presidency. With a stronger selection of the gene pool from ANY > political party it might have turned the trick and George would be headed > back for Texas, wouldn't he?
I guess that we'll never know, that is, what took place in the back room of the CBS news moguls, but I can at least speculate that Dan Rather was somehow deemed dispensable.
In retrospect, I believe the story was viable, and probably a good one, although not properly researched by CBS News. I'm not so sure, and we'll probably never really know, if Rather orchistrated any known forgery, or document to unseat George.
The neo-conservatives here will certainly suggest that this was, in Dan Rather's machivellian ways, a done deal to discredit George. I'm not entirely convinced that this scenario is an accurate representation of the truth. Probably closer to home was the damn ratings!
Yes! The damn ratings! It seems at least that even CBS News moguls understood that Bush somehow managed to pull off an even higher poll rating than he did four years earlier, and, since CBS lagged terribly behind in televised news ratings, sacrificed Dan in an effort to strengthen their own lagging ratings.
That's my take. But again, none of us will probably ever know.
Kindest regards, Frank
_______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
_______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
