Critical Memos Faked?

[Nightwing]

As a voter, does anyone really care if the president served in the military? I for one don't. Does it give him/her a different perspective on his job as a leader? I'm not sure you need to be in the military to comprehend the service or the horrors of war. It certainly makes it more real.

[Timber Loftis]

Yeah, I care. You have to experience the horrors of war to truly know it. And we ARE in a war time.

Just like I respect meat-eaters more if they have ever slaughtered their own meat. Taking a life is a very personal and moving thing, and IMO it is important to have done it if you are going to pretend to speak with authority on it.

[Nightwing]

I don't think you need to be in the front lines killing people or watching them get killed to know how horrible it is. You either respect life or you don't. I don't think I could take a life on purpose but I can sympathize with the people who have. A good leader should be able to distinguish the positives and neg. of war without having been in one.

[Timber Loftis]

Sorry, as someone who has taken life and seen death, I simply disagree. But, I will agree to disagree and move on with the discussion.

[Oblivion437]

Back on topic...The memos are written in a type, font and setup that only word processors or (in 1973, as word processors didn't exist then) an IBM Selectric Composer are capable of.

Get this though, the IBM SC is a typesetter machine, which in today's dollars will run you a cool 22 grand. Just note that the Air National Guard's equipment is mostly hand-me-downs from the Air Force...

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html for more info.

[Felix The Assassin]

What a surprise to learn of this today [img]graemlins/biggrin.gif[/img] .

From CNN to boot:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...nts/index.html

Inside Politics
CBS can't vouch for Bush Guard memos
White House asks if Kerry campaign involved

Monday, September 20, 2004 Posted: 6:23 PM EDT (2223 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- CBS News said Monday it cannot vouch for the authenticity of documents that cast doubt on President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service, and the White House suggested Democrats might have been involved.

"CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," CBS News President Andrew Heyward said in a statement issued by the network.

"We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."

The documents were attributed to Texas Air National Guard Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's squadron commander in 1972 and 1973.

They appeared to suggest that Bush refused a direct order to take a flight physical, something required for him to do to remain in good standing.

Further, CBS said the documents showed Killian believed he was being pressured to "sugarcoat" the performance of Bush, whose father was then a congressman from Texas. Killian died in 1984.

CBS broadcast the documents on the newsmagazine "60 Minutes" September 8, reporting that experts had vouched for their authenticity.

The authenticity of the documents was questioned almost immediately. Other experts said the documents may not have been real and may have been typed on equipment not available in the early 1970s.

"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," said CBS anchor Dan Rather, who was the principal reporter for the story.

"It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism."

Rather said that if he had known then what he knows now, "I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question."

The CBS report also included an interview with former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes in which he said he helped get Bush a slot in the Texas National Guard.

In the interview, Barnes described his awarding of a slot to Bush as "preferential treatment."

CBS did not retract that part of its report.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said CBS's admission "raises a number of serious questions, and those questions need to be looked into fully."

"Those are questions that need to be answered in terms of who is responsible for being the source of the documents -- the original source of the documents," McClellan said.

"The one thing that is not in question is the timing of these recent attacks on the president. It is clear that there's been an orchestrated effort by Democrats and the Kerry campaign to tear down the president and use old, recycled attacks."

Killian's former secretary, 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox, said she never typed the documents, which would have been her responsibility.

"These are not real. They're not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him," Knox told The Dallas Morning News.

Knox did tell the newspaper and CBS News that the documents echoed Killian's views on Bush.

She said Killian retained memos for a personal "cover his back" file he kept in a locked drawer of his desk, but she was not sure what happened to them after he died.
Burkett connection

The White House distributed copies of the Killian memos to reporters after the "60 Minutes" segment aired and did not directly challenge their authenticity, saying only that other organizations were raising questions about them.

In its statement, the network said it obtained the documents from retired National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, who has admitted deliberately misleading a CBS News producer "to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."

Burkett claimed in the past that when Bush was governor of Texas his aides urged Guard officers to remove anything embarrassing from his service records. The White House vigorously denied the allegation.

McClellan called Burkett "a discredited source from the past, someone's who's been very involved with Democrats."

When asked for evidence that Democrats were behind the documents, McClellan cited only the timing of a "coordinated effort" by party leaders to seize on the allegations contained in the documents.

Democrats launched a two-minute video within days of the CBS report that highlighted questions about Bush's Guard service.

Bush trained as a fighter pilot after he joined the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 following his graduation from Yale University.

That was at the height of the Vietnam War, a time when the Guard was considered a haven from the military draft.

Bush was grounded in August 1972 after he failed to take a flight physical, and other news organizations have reported that analyses of Bush's military records raise questions about whether he completed his required service.

The White House points to Bush's honorable discharge as evidence that he completed his military obligations.

Heyward said the network believed the documents were real, but after further reporting cannot establish that they are.

He said an independent review of how the reports were prepared and broadcast will be commissioned by CBS News and the findings of that review will be made public.

[Khazadman Risen]

Oh I trust cBS to tell us the truth on these memos.

[Ronn_Bman]

Did anyone see Dan Rather's defiance last Monday after the initial charges were made about these documents' authenticity? Venomously (no exaggeration) claiming it was nothing more than partisans trying to discredit this perfectly valid story.

According to an MSNBC story, Rather made the statement immediately after that episode of 20/20 aired that he had never believed in a story more than this one. That despite the fact that, as it has become obvious, CBS was warned time and time, by their own experts, that the evidence didn't meet the necessary standards.

This story had to be aired because it just had to be true, and no amount of flimsy evidence or shady characters would be allowed to stop it.

I love the fact that their argument now is that no one is addressing the issue raised and that they are side stepping by discussing the documents. That is so rich! Without the documents there is no story to address. Now the reporters have become the reported, and they obviously don't like the questions asked.

It is always hard to cite examples of the broadcast networks' leftward leaning because that leaning isn't offered as unashamedly as it is on everyone's favorite whipping network, Fox News, but this has been the perfect example.

Hurray for complete objectivity in journalism! You certainly don't find this kind of thing in the world of politics.

[John D Harris]

Here's one for you Ronn, one of the Swiftie's guys had a FORMER law partner that was big in Repubican politics that means the Swifties are Republican Shrills. The man that gave the papers to CBS is himself, not removed by being a partner with a politico, BUT HE is HIMSELF ONE a politico for the Dems. yet where is the outcry from the anti-swifties folks and their HIGH MORAL HORSES about Burkett? It seems their side is engaging in the very thing they are trying to say the otherside is doing, although the best they can come up with is 1 step removed. Their side, by the logic they are trying to push, is actively engaged not 1 step removed.

Take some advice from an OLD COOT folks, don't scream and flail about so much, for your side is probibly doing worse. In other words don't go chunk'n rocks, cause your house has a "Hale" of a lot more glass then you thunk.

[ 09-22-2004, 01:07 PM: Message edited by: John D Harris ]

[John D Harris]

Originally posted by Nightwing: As a voter, does anyone really care if the president served in the military? I for one don't. Does it give him/her a different perspective on his job as a leader? I'm not sure you need to be in the military to comprehend the service or the horrors of war. It certainly makes it more real.

No I don't care if they served or not I care about how they preformed their service! that is what matters. It may give them a differant perspective, but so does anything somebody has done in life.


This notion that only a somebody that is experanced(sp?) at something can represent that thing is Stup...er...the sillest logic I have ever heard in my life. If that is the case then why have elections? Why not just take serveys and appoint the person that best represents the group that the majority of U.S. Citizens fit into? If only a military man can represent the military asspect of the office of the President of the U.S.A. what about the Statesmen asspect of that same office? Or the head of law enforcement?

The logic that only somebody that is one can represent one, is assinine at best! Would anybody being tried for drugs only be represented by a drug user lawyer? Can only lawyers that have been raped represent rape victims? Only drunkard lawyers that have lost their driver's lic. represent drunk drivers? As an EXAMPLE of that logic: T.L. can only represent Ken-tukee country boys that have moved to the big city, in thier 30's, and are atheists. I'm willing to bet there are Zero enviromental intrests that fit that bill, so by using that logic T.L. could not represent a single enviromental interest. Now we can carry out that logic to the max., where only everyone of us could represent ourselves!!!