So much for "ABC and CBS PWN BUSH"

[The Mad Monk]

If it was Burkett, his allegations about overheard conversations and dumped documents all go out the window.

[Berzerker]

I have to admit, I'm pretty pissed about this. CBS's unprofessionalism made me look like a fool. They were so ready to jump on a scandal before being scooped they didn't make a thorough check first. They have the journalistic integrity of FOXNews.

Weren't you eager to plaster it all over the internet?

[chequita guevara]

If it was him, that was ****in' stupid.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Weren't you eager to plaster it all over the internet?

Yep. And that's why I'm pissed. CBS should have been a solid source.

[GePap]

at this story, and the insane hyperbole around it.

Lets see:

CBS news made the horribly damaging and utterly incredible claim that the oldest son of a powerful and privilaged New England Family with close connections to powerful politicial and financial interests might have had preferential treatment (An accusation so horrendous as to be, well, obvious and rather self-evident). They presented 4 pieces of paper to presnet this rather obvious "charge"- at least 2 of which may have been false. This of course is the worst piece of journalism since, well, besides since some outlets begun broadcasting utterly unsubstantiated claims about one candidate as truth, well, since the entire media failed to investigate charges that a certain state had a huge wepaons of mass destruction arsenal, as charged by the admin. and supposedly backed by a very nice presentation to the UN (all of which porved incorrect, so ojne wonders about those charges). Since that failure (of course, insignificant compared to this- cause war and peace does not compare to a TV channel making rather obvious charges). Of course, there was also the whole fiasco with the Jessica Lynch story- or the misrepresentation of Dean's speech post Iowa, but heck, I mean, this incredible (and self-evident) claim that a rich boy got preferential treatment is so shocking that most Americans would have never thought it possible that a rich boy get treated differently thasn someone who's father was not a politician.

And while the "serious media", and the bloggosphere spend hours on this critical issue over a self-evident charge, I have to turn on to a comedy show to see footage of our beloved secretary of defense ranting and raving, and multiple times being unable to get right the name of Osama Bin Laden, instead making the minor mistake of turning the Osama into Saddam (hey, the sound sort of the same) and the Bin Laden into Hussein (well, not as close). Cause lord knows one is more a sign of the times than the other

But Jay Leno (who interestingly enough has a far greater rating than any of the Cable "news" channels) did have one nice quip on the subject:

"What do you call CBS News with its credibility gone? Fox News".

[The Mad Monk]

Bush says he's 'proud' of Vietnam-era National Guard service
GOP contender disputes report of favorable treatment
July 4, 1999
Web posted at: 7:07 p.m. EDT (2307 GMT)


From staff and wire reports


AMHERST, New Hampshire (AllPolitics, July 4) -- GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush defended his military service record Sunday, after a report in the Los Angeles Times said he may gotten "highly favorable treatment" to win a place as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War era.

"I applied, and I wanted to fly jets, and I did," the Texas governor told reporters while on a July Fourth campaign swing in New Hampshire. "I was proud of my service. Had my unit been called up, I would have gone overseas."

"I would have gone had I been called. I can assure you of that," Bush said, noting that his commander told the Times "there was no preferential treatment given."

Times: No evidence of political pressure

In its report, the Los Angeles Times said it found no evidence that either Bush or his father, former President George Bush, had personally tried to influence or pressure anyone to get the younger Bush a place in the Texas Guard. Bush's father was a congressman from Houston at the time.

But the Times also found that despite a long waiting list nationwide, Bush easily got in the Guard and received a commission as a second lieutenant, despite lacking the credentials many other candidates had, such as ROTC experience. He also had no previous aviation experience.

"He was a son of privilege, his father was a man of means, political means, and if he was Joe Schmo trying to get into the Guard ... it wasn't going to happen," said Richard Serrano, author of the Times story.

"His name didn't hurt, obviously," retired Col. Charles C. Shoemake, who served with Bush, told the Times.

Texas Air National Guard historian Tom Hail also told the Times that the fast-tracking of Bush through the ranks was unusual.

"I've never heard of that," Hail said. "Generally, they did that for doctors only, mostly because we needed extra flight surgeons."

However, the Dallas Morning News, which also looked into Bush's military record, reported that while Bush's unit in Texas had a waiting list for many spots, he was accepted because he was one of a handful of applicants willing and qualified to spend more than a year in active training flying F-102 jets.


Bush joined Guard to follow father's footsteps

Bush, a Yale University graduate, has said he joined the Air National Guard rather than volunteer for Army combat duty because he wanted to learn how to fly jet fighters like his father, who was a fighter pilot in World War II.

"He said he wanted to fly just like his daddy," Bush's commander, Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, told the Times. "Nobody did anything for him. There was no ... influence on his behalf."

The Times reported that many of Bush's former colleagues and superiors in the Guard remember him as a bright young leader who worked hard.

"He did the work. His daddy didn't do it for him," said retired Maj. Willie J. Hooper.


Few in presidential field have military service

During the Vietnam era, joining the National Guard was seen by many as a means of avoiding the draft and combat duty. In 1988, Dan Quayle, then on the GOP ticket with Bush's father, was bedeviled by accusations that his prominent family helped him win a coveted spot in the Indiana National Guard.

However, the political potency of the issue in 2000 is questionable. Of the current crop of presidential candidates, only one -- Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona -- saw combat duty in Vietnam. A Navy pilot, McCain was shot down and spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.

Two others in the field, Vice President Al Gore and GOP Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire, also served in Vietnam but not in combat. Joining Bush and Quayle in stateside military service were Steve Forbes, who was in the New Jersey National Guard, and former Sen. Bill Bradley, who served in the Air Force Reserve.

The only woman in the race, Elizabeth Dole, wasn't eligible for the draft. The rest of the men in the field either received deferments or were issued a high number that kept them from being drafted.


Kasich: Times story 'gotcha' politics

One of Bush's competitors for the GOP nomination, Rep. John Kasich of Ohio, said the Times revelations about Bush's war record was "no story."

"I didn't read anything in there that didn't say that he didn't do a good job, that he was praised by a lot of people he worked with," said Kasich, who had a high draft number, on ABC's "This Week" program. "I hope this isn't the beginning of 'gotcha' politics in terms of the presidential campaign."

In 1992, President Bill Clinton, an opponent of the Vietnam War, was similarly buffeted with questions about his lack of military service, including whether he solicited help from people with influence to keep him from being drafted.

In the end, however, he beat the elder Bush to win in 1992 and another veteran, former Sen. Bob Dole, in 1996.


Correspondent Candy Crowley and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/07/04/bush.02/

I found this rather intriguing.

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by GePap
at this story, and the insane hyperbole around it.

Typical response from a partisan hack.

[Ted Striker]

Partisans

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten


Typical response from a partisan hack.

It's like he's a robot repeating the samething over and over. I think you should kick him to get him out of the loop he's in.

[Drake Tungsten]

He's not a robot; robots speak Japanese...

[DinoDoc]

I still say you should kick him to free him from this annoying loop he's in.

[Drake Tungsten]

Just set me up and I'll make sure to knock him down...

[The Mad Monk]

New York Times:

Ex-Guardsman Is Said to Be a CBS Source
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

Published: September 16, 2004


OUSTON, Sept. 15 - Bill Burkett once said his job was to make Gov. George W. Bush a hero.

As a lieutenant colonel working on the readiness of the Texas National Guard, Mr. Burkett, a lay preacher's son from Portales, N.M., was brought in with a high commission in 1996 to work on mobilization plans that would make the Guard shine.

"I was very supportive of Bush," he said in an interview this year.

But it was not long before Mr. Burkett, whom colleagues call a stickler for rules, fell out with senior commanders and ended up in a suit against the Guard and its leaders. He also became disillusioned with Mr. Bush, who he said was not supporting needed reforms in the Guard.

The bitterness, he later said, moved him to go public with what he said he and a fellow officer, George O. Conn, witnessed one night in Austin in 1997. That was when, he said, commanders, in touch with Mr. Bush's political advisers, left documents in the trash while sanitizing the governor's service records. .

Now, Mr. Burkett, whose account last February was derided by the White House, has been drawn into another fray, this one on documents supplied to "60 Minutes II" on CBS. On Tuesday, a person at the network named Mr. Burkett as a source of records critical of Mr. Bush's Vietnam era service that CBS said last week came from the personal files of Lieutenant Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died in 1984.

Citing discrepancies in the typeface and wording of the documents, a growing number of experts, as well as Mr. Killian's wife and son and his former secretary, have called them fakes. The secretary, Marian Carr Knox, said they appeared to reflect Colonel Killian's sentiments that someone might have sought to recreate from lost originals.

Mr. Burkett (pronounced BURR-kit), 55, did not respond to numerous messages in recent days and turned away a reporter for The New York Times on Wednesday who called several times from outside the locked gate of his ranch in Baird, Tex., east of Abilene.

His lawyer, David Van Os of San Antonio, repeatedly declined to answer when asked whether Mr. Burkett had a role in obtaining or providing the documents.

"Bill Burkett is tired of being speculated about when the real story is and should be where was George Bush?" Mr. Van Os said. "The possibility that Bill Burkett would falsify documents or falsify any story is zero."

Robert Strong, a former Guard officer interviewed on "60 Minutes,'' said documents that CBS showed to him for authentication bore a facsimile stamp of a Kinko's store in Abilene. Mr. Van Os, asked whether that pointed to Mr. Burkett, said he had no information about that.

Mr. Conn, who vouched for Mr. Burkett in his suit in 2002, has a United States government job in Germany and did not respond to an e-mail message and a telephone message left at his home in Dallas. In an e-mail message in February, Mr. Conn said: "I know LTC Bill Burkett and served with him several years ago in the Texas Army National Guard. I believe him to be honest and forthright. He 'calls things like he sees them.' "

Mr. Conn declined to say whether he had seen any cleansing of Mr. Bush's files with Mr. Burkett.

Harvey Gough, a restaurateur in Dallas who was in the Guard with Mr. Burkett and Mr. Conn, said this week that he had recently spoken with Mr. Conn in Europe and came away convinced that Mr. Conn had no knowledge of the Killian documents.

Mr. Gough said he also had no idea of their origins and had never discussed the matter with Mr. Burkett.

Yet another officer who served with Mr. Burkett, Dennis Adams, a retired lieutenant colonel now working as a security officer at the State Capitol in Austin, said this week, "I don't know of anybody I'd put in a higher category than Bill."

Mr. Adams said that Mr. Burkett had told him afterward of having witnessed the sanitizing of Mr. Bush's Guard file "and that some of the things in the trash were pulled out.''

"He never did say by whom," Mr. Adams added. "I don't have the foggiest idea what documents of any kind he ever had," Mr. Adams said.

In addition to describing what he said was the destruction of documents, Mr. Burkett said in the February interview that also overheard a conversation in mid-1997 between Gen. Daniel James, head of the Texas National Guard, and Joseph M. Allbaugh, a top aide to Governor Bush, that discussed the Guard records.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/16/politics/16burkett.html?ex=1095998400&en=2e5fd563e5d3bdbc&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1

Compare and contrast with the Washington Post article I posted earlier.

Please.

[Drake Tungsten]

Like we needed more evidence that the New York Times is hopelessly biased...

[The Mad Monk]

Rather Concedes Papers Are Suspect
CBS Anchor Urges Media to Focus On Bush Service

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 16, 2004; Page A01

CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he used to question President Bush's National Guard record last week on "60 Minutes."

"If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story," Rather said in an interview last night. "Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front and say, 'Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.' "

_____Documents' Differences_____

• Compare: Memo obtained from Pentagon differs from disputed memo obtained by CBS.

_____Live Discussion_____

• Transcript: Washington Post staff writer Michael Dobbs, who has been following the story about Bush's Vietnam-era service, was online Monday.



_____More From The Post_____

• Expert Cited by CBS Says He Didn't Authenticate Papers (The Washington Post, Sep 14, 2004)
• Gaps in Service Continue to Dog Bush (The Washington Post, Sep 12, 2004)
• Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush (The Washington Post, Sep 10, 2004)
• Records Say Bush Balked at Order (The Washington Post, Sep 9, 2004)
• Democrat Says He Helped Bush Into Guard to Score Points (The Washington Post, Sep 4, 2004)




Wednesday's Question:

Which president created the Federal Emergency Management Agency?
William H. Taft
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Jimmy Carter







_____Free E-mail Newsletters_____

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Rather spoke after interviewing the secretary to Bush's former squadron commander, who told him that the memos attributed to her late boss are fake -- but that they reflect the commander's belief that Bush was receiving preferential treatment to escape some of his Guard commitments.

The former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, is the latest person to raise questions about the "60 Minutes" story, which Rather and top CBS officials still defend while vowing to investigate mounting questions about whether the 30-year-old documents used in the story were part of a hoax. Their shift in tone yesterday came as GOP critics as well as some media commentators demanded that the story be retracted and suggested that Rather should step down.

"This is not about me," Rather said before anchoring last night's newscast. "I recognize that those who didn't want the information out and tried to discredit the story are trying to make it about me, and I accept that."

For Rather, 72, it is an all-too-familiar role. In his CBS career, he has survived an impertinent exchange with President Richard M. Nixon during Watergate, a clandestine trek through the mountains of Afghanistan, an on-air confrontation with George H.W. Bush over Iran-contra and a much-debated sitdown with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

Now, on the final leg of a career launched by a Texas hurricane, Rather is trying to weather his biggest storm. And some of his closest friends and associates are concerned.

"I think this is very, very serious," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent. "When Dan tells me these documents are not forgeries, I believe him. But somehow we've got to find a way to show people these documents are not forgeries." Some friends of Rather, whose contract runs until the end of 2006, are discussing whether he might be forced to make an early exit from CBS.

In her interview with Rather yesterday, Knox repeated her contention that the documents used by "60 Minutes" were bogus. Knox, 86, worked for Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian while he supervised Bush's unit in the early 1970s.

"I know that I didn't type them," Knox said of the Killian memos. "However, the information in there is correct," she said, adding that Killian and the other officers would "snicker about what [Bush] was getting away with."

Rather said he was "relieved and pleased" by Knox's comments that the disputed memos reflected Killian's view of the favorable treatment that Bush received in the military unit. But he said, "I take very seriously her belief that the documents are not authentic." If Knox is right, Rather said, the public "won't hear about it from a spokesman. They'll learn it from me."

But he also delivered a message to "our journalistic competitors," including The Washington Post and rival networks: "Instead of asking President Bush and his staff questions about what is true and not true about the president's military service, they ask me questions: 'How do you know this and that about the documents?' "

CBS News President Andrew Heyward defended the work that went into the Guard story. "I feel that we did a tremendous amount of reporting before the story went on the air or we wouldn't have put it on the air," Heyward said last night. "But we want to get to the bottom of these unresolved issues," including questions about the memos' typography, signatures and format. "There's such a ferocious debate about these documents."

Heyward said the account by Knox is "significant, which is why we're putting it on our prime-time program," "60 Minutes."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24633-2004Sep15.html

Apparently, he's willing to accept that the documents are forgeries, as long as somebody is there to support his attack.