Dan Rather’s suspicious alliance: With the Kerry campaign

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Written By Doug Schmitz

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Image courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center under CC BY 2.0.

“What they’re investigating is how to minimize the public relations damage. They have only two choices: They must either be the duper or the dupee. In other words, either someone at CBS was in on the fraud, or they were defrauded by the con artist who passed off the forgeries as genuine. What did Dan Rather know, and when did he know it?”

— Jay Bryant, Townhall.com, 9/11/04

COLUMNIST’S NOTE: The following is an in-depth analysis of Dan Rather’s current imbroglio that is a textbook case of journalistic fraud and media arrogance. It’s a look at how media elites like Rather are rapidly coming to the end of the road in their highly paid careers of shamelessly slanting the news in their politically motivated attempts to destroy President Bush by influencing the 2004 election in John Kerry’s favor.

Faced with plummeting ratings, a dossier of past credibility problems and a long overdue retirement set for next spring, CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather must have thought he could silently exit his coveted anchor chair with one last smear against President Bush before the 2004 election, instead of leaving his $8 million-per-year, anti-Republican post with a vestige of journalistic integrity.

But when desperate times call for desperate measures, especially with an embittered John Kerry slipping in the polls and running all over the map on Iraq and the economy, no one knows how to spike a news story that coddles Democrats and slanders Republicans quite like Dan Rather, the Don of the media elites – and one of Kerry’s most loyal media allies.

As Mark Steyn observed in the Chicago Sun-Times about Rather and other media leftists trying to destroy Bush before the fall election, while unashamedly campaigning for Kerry, “Big Media are trashing their reputations in service to a man who can never win.”

With the Left still seething over President Bush’s rising poll numbers and unwavering character, the media elites are still pulling for John Kerry as he frantically grasps at any available straw in his reckless bid to hijack the White House at any cost. The simple fact that Rather resurrected the Bush National Guard story for the fourth time on what has become the top venue for Bush-haters, ‘60 Minutes,’ is a clear sign that Rather and the rest of the Clinton-loving media are absolutely panic-stricken about doing whatever they can to get Kerry in the Oval Office in January 2005.

“CBS is being a willing accomplice to something that was meant to disparage the president,” Bobby Eberle of Talon News told Fox News Monday night about Rather’s unprofessional behavior regarding bogus memos Rather used to slam Bush. “They look like they’re supporting the Democratic Party and promoting an agenda of their own.”

Brent Bozell, director of the Media Research Center and author of the now-prophetic book, “Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media,” told CBN News in a July interview that “there’s a tremendous movement away, even an exodus, from the mainstream press” because of their slanted news reporting.

“Now, they’re faced with a conundrum: “Do we continue going at business as usual, or do we acknowledge the reality that we’ve lost our audiences and try to regain them?” The evidence so far is they’d rather go down in flames.”

Echoing Bozell’s sentiments, Eberle added that Rather has had a serious stranglehold on the ebb and flow of news and information at CBS News, but now “he’s been unmasked.”

In fact, the American Spectator reported that Rather is nervous, defensive and running very scared, said one CBS News producer, who declined to give the magazine their name: “There are at least two people in this building who have insisted we got copies of these memos from the Kerry campaign by way of an additional source.”

National Review’s Stanley Kurtz asked: “Why did Dan Rather and CBS News, against all expectations, impeach their own credibility to defend the authenticity of memos that are almost certainly forgeries? The obvious answer is that they did it to save the faltering Kerry campaign from a final and decisive blow.”

That’s probably why Rather’s seemingly willing alliance with John Kerry and the main source for the ‘60 Minutes II’ hit piece about Bush’s National Guard records, Ben Barnes, a Bush-hating Democrat who’s the former Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and current vice chair of the Kerry campaign, is so suspicious.

What was meant to help Kerry get the upper hand on Bush, without leaving any fingerprints, may have actually backfired – and with good reason. Simply put, by trying to destroy Bush’s moral and political reputation in a partisan media crusade to help John Kerry, Dan Rather may have unwittingly outed a Kerry Watergate-style conspiracy of phony memos that were intentionally planted to severely discredit Bush before Nov. 2 – if indeed a Kerry link to the scandal does exist.

“You absolutely are seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said on Sept. 9. “The polls show Senator Kerry falling behind, and it’s the same old recycled attacks that we’ve seen every time the president has been up for election.”

Newsmax.com reported last Tuesday that another clear signal that John Kerry is in complete panic mode is when Kerry had asked the Federal Election Committee for advice on how he could still raise enough money to cover the cost of recount votes this fall.

CBS NEWS SUSPECTED OF RIGGING 2004 ELECTION FOR KERRY

In a move that was nixed two days later, on Sept. 14, Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., formally requested a congressional investigation into “an apparent criminal conspiracy to rig the 2004 presidential election,” which would have looked at how someone purposely forged Bush’s National Guard record and had CBS News report them as fact in order to fulfill a political agenda.

In a letter to Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the Subcommittee of Telecommunications and the Internet, Cox had called for a probe into “the continued use by CBS News of apparently forged documents concerning the service record of President George W. Bush intended to unfairly damage his reputation and influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.”

Cox added that despite the “growing abundance of the evidence that CBS News has aided and abetted fraud, the network has declined to reveal the source of the disputed documents.”

But according to Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, urging a congressional investigation would have made CBS News and Dan Rather look like victims of the federal government and Republicans in Congress.

In effect, Rather’s broadcasts have already resembled bald-faced, nightly ‘527’ anti-Bush attack ads for the Kerry campaign and the “Democratic” Party, overtly designed to turn public opinion against Bush.

With Kerry’s pitiable campaign becoming nothing but a slanderously venomous Bush hate-fest of uncontrollable rage, the media elites are completely in the tank for Kerry as it is. After all, the Democrats’ talking points eventually make up the bulk of the media elite’s evening “news.” In the long run, all Kerry cares about is politicizing everything from the economy to our national security in his insatiable lust to regain power, while the pro-Democrat media protect his political opportunism and quickly rush to his defense.

This is also why the Kerry campaign may have kept their promise of getting back at the Swift Boat Vets, although there isn’t solid evidence of the Kerry campaign’s direct connection to the phony memos.

Most assuredly, Kerry’s egomaniacal presidential run has been the dirtiest, sleaziest and sorriest excuse for a political campaign since the dog days of Al Gore’s attempted political larceny of the White House in 2000.

This is because Kerry will say and do anything to get elected – based on his flip-flops about Iraq, the economy and the unanswered questions about his Vietnam and senatorial records. It’s already seen in Kerry’s refusal to disavow the ‘60 Minutes’ phony memo story, as well as the Texans for Truth ads – especially since Kerry and Edwards had hypocritically demanded Bush disavow his phantom ties to the Swift Boat Vets. Since Kerry has flatly refused to address the Swift Boat Vets, he continues to savagely discredit Bush’s National Guard record by employing desperate smear tactics and using a fellow fraud, Ben Barnes (who can’t even keep his stories straight) to do his dirty work.

According to Newsmax.com’s Geoff Metcalf, it’s also “significant (and revealing) that Rather apparently feels a rabid Democrat partisan like Ben Barnes deserves voluminous airtime, but the non-partisan Swift Boat Vets are somehow “unworthy” of the lofty venues of CBS.”

This is the coming meltdown of a very liberal media establishment Bozell mentioned that has already surfaced with Rather’s current implosion – and that so many media leftists like Rather, Eric Alterman and Joe Conason, categorically deny. What generally started with the Clinton impeachment and boiled over with Florida 2000 has increased in its intensity as media elites become more aggressively brazen in their distortions. It’s seen in the slanted headlines, stories and polls that seek to create a false image of Democrats, namely Kerry, especially now that these phony memos have stared them right in the face.

RATHER’S ULTIMATE GOAL WAS TO DESTROY BUSH BEFORE NOV. 2

But the most damning part of this possible Kerry/CBS News-initiated scandal is that Rather deliberately misled his audience into believing something that wasn’t true about Bush, by not including those opposing the phony memos – sources which Rather deliberately ignored: CBS News’ own handwriting experts, who warned Rather not to use them; the family of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who disputed the phony memos and said that Killian praised Bush as an excellent fighter pilot; and Bush’s former National Guard roommate Dean Roome, who also vouched for Bush.

Most importantly, Rather’s highly questionable source for the ‘60 Minutes II’ “interview,” Ben Barnes, has had a long history of lies, and financial and political corruption, which Rather never saw fit to reveal in his anti-Bush hatchet job. By all journalistic standards and ethics, Rather is just another in a long lines of Jayson Blairs.

But Rather and his media pals continue to indict Bush on false charges, based on bogus information. Now, Rather is more concerned with saving face by insanely accusing the White House of not confirming the phony memos than telling the truth about them.

After all, the ultimate goal of Rather’s deceptive ’60 Minutes II’ “interview was to inflict the most political damage on Bush’s character right before the fall election by using falsified documents that Rather either knew were fake or was possibly conned into believing were originals by either the DNC or Kerry campaign operatives. But based on Rather’s track record of deliberately slanting the news against Republican administrations – and his Sept. 8 fluff piece with Barnes, the former is more likely to be true, especially if it turns out that he’s actually been involved in the scandal or protecting someone in the Kerry campaign who tried to smear Bush.

Opinionjournal.com’s John Fund cited the New York Times, which actively endorses Kerry, as reporting last February that “an unnamed former Texas official – later revealed to be Mr. Barnes – was telling reporters he had interceded on behalf of Mr. Bush but that his story “was subject to change, and there were no documents to support his claims.” This is really what’s at issue as Rather’s defense has been predictably unraveling.

Barnes is not only Kerry’s close friend and top Kerry fund-raiser, he also lives right next door to Kerry’s multi-million dollar Nantucket mansion. What’s more, according to Newsmax.com, Barnes is in line for a top position in (God forbid!) a possible Kerry administration. In addition, Barnes is also connected to Texans for Truth, the new ‘527’ soft-money, pro-Kerry group, which has launched a series of character assassination ads against Bush, just weeks before the election. This is equally suspect, since it seemed to suspiciously coincide with Rather’s ’60 Minutes II’ interview with the now-discredited Barnes.

This also seems to point to the fact that what Kerry sorely lacks in personal character and integrity, he makes up for in the politics of personal destruction in his indefatigable quest to snag his ultimate dream job – namely with the willing help of useful idiots of the media elite that always seem to be at his beck and call as his media muses.

The anti-Bush group is the result of Kerry’s spinelessly pathetic response to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who have brilliantly exposed Kerry’s military and political fraudulence, of which Rather has still refused to report and has yet to interview on ‘60 Minutes.’ This anti-Bush cabal, ironically from Texas, was specifically created to sway the political debate by distracting attention away from Kerry’s unanswered war crimes charges he mercilessly leveled against over two million honorable Vietnam veterans in 1971, without a shred of evidence – and without Dan Rather holding Kerry accountable for his documented pro-Communist, anti-American treason.

What’s equally suspicious is this Texans for Truth, a Bush-bashing group of supposedly former National Guard commanders and pilots, backed by MoveOn.org, is made up of pro-Kerry Democrats that seemed to have suddenly appeared out of thin air to launch defamatory attacks on Bush, who’s National Guard record has already been put to rest.

BUSH RELEASED RECORDS; KERRY STILL REFUSES TO SIGN FORM 180

While Bush has willingly released all of his military records into the public domain and ultimately fulfilled his National Guard duties, Kerry, on the other hand, was asked to leave Vietnam after only four months and has adamantly refused to sign a Form 180 to release his entire military files, which would further validate the Swift Boat Vets’ well-vetted concerns about Kerry’s political, mental and emotional fitness to be president.

Besides, if military service was a requirement for the presidency, Bill Clinton should have been disqualified, along with fellow Vietnam draft dodger John Edwards.

One of the many questions that needed to be asked is why the American public never heard of Texans for Truth or the forged memos until now, especially since they both seemed to have immediately surfaced shortly after Kerry shook up his campaign staff by adding former Clintonites Joe Lockhart, Mike McCurry and rabid Clinton attack dogs James Carville and Paul Begala, who still work full-time for CNN, which is a direct conflict of interest, since Carville and Begala are both ad hoc advisors to John Kerry.

With Ben Barnes and Dan Rather’s cozy connections to the Texas Democratic Party in question, the other obvious questions that need to be addressed are: What did Rather know about this new group and the forged documents, and if he did so, for how long and why did he sit on the story, if for no other reason than to “get” Bush before November? – especially since CBS News had admitted to “working” on this “story” for nearly four years, which makes this all the more suspect, since it was politically calculated.

Besides, it’s well known that articles about Bush’s National Guard service and questions surrounding the alleged and much-exaggerated preferential treatment go back to around 1994, when Bush ran for Texas governor against Democrat Ann Richards, who also tried to slander Bush with conspiracy theories about Bush’s National Guard service.

It’s almost as if Rather and CBS News were actually plotting to derail Bush’s 2004 re-election bid, after Bush legitimately won in 2000. After all, the day after Al Gore’s bitter hostage standoff of the Florida electorate ended, Rather spitefully told David Letterman that Bush was “selected” and “not elected.” Rather also accused Katherine Harris of previously declaring Bush the winner “as she sees it and decrees it.”

In their calculated plan to take out Bush, this also means that Rather and CBS News producers had already known for nearly four years that Barnes was deliberately lying about his account of Bush’s National Guard record, especially since Rather also knew Barnes had changed his story several times before, based on his political ambitions.

In fact, according to Newsmax.com on Sept. 15 reported that “evidence continues to mount that a bogus report on Bush’s military service aired last week by CBS newsman Dan Rather had a Democratic Party pedigree – with the Democratic National Committee now touting Rather’s bogus bombshell in their latest Bush attack ad,” released Tuesday.

The questions that Rather needs to immediately answer are: Where did you get the phony memos? Was the Kerry campaign involved? Why were you so quick to run with this manufactured story? How did your so-called “experts” “authenticate” the bogus memos and why didn’t you include experts and family members who disputed their veracity?

Equally important, Mr. Rather, why weren’t they written in the official military format and why is there an 18-month gap in the timeline between the memos? Rather can no longer say he doesn’t have enough evidence to prove that the memos are phony.

Speaking of real experts that Rather never bothered to use, Joseph M. Newcomer, Ph.D, a 25-year typography expert, told Fox News last Tuesday night: “I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake.” Newcomer added that the phony memos were possibly produced around 1995.

DOCUMENT EXPERT WARNED CBS NEWS NOT TO USE PHONY MEMOS

What’s more, Emily Will, a North Carolina veteran forensic document examiner, told ABC News she immediately identified problems with the one document CBS News hired her to analyze the weekend before Rather’s ‘60 Minutes II’ broadcast:

“I found five significant differences in the questioned handwriting, and I found problems with the printing itself as to whether it could have been produced by a typewriter,” Will said.

ABC News added that Will said she e-mailed CBS News producer Mary Mapes about her concerns and strongly urged her the night before not to use the memos:

“I told them that all the questions I was asking them on Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran that story,” Will said. “I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply.”

National Review’s Jim Geraghty said last Tuesday that “this bit of news tells us that CBS was not ‘duped’ onto this, that they weren’t ‘fooled,’ but that they knew the documents were probably fake and ran with it anyway.”

But based on Rather’s well-documented antipathy toward the Bush family and all conservative Republicans, which is constantly reflected in his slanted reporting, the only reason Rather ignored these other experts and is now running from an internal CBS investigation is because Rather wanted this phony memo story to be true.

In fact, in trying to bring down Bush, Rather’s apparent cover up may be as worse as the felony crime of forgery.

As National Review’s Stanley Kurtz observed: “What all this means is that, given its audience, CBS News is no longer concerned about preserving it reputation for fairness. On the contrary, CBS now wants and needs to preserve its reputation for liberalism.”

But it’s not just that Rather’s audience is as profoundly liberal in their views as he. It’s also that Rather’s long history of partisan favoritism toward the Democratic Party has completely clouded and taken over his news judgment.

KERRY, RATHER MAY BE INVOLVED IN PHONY MEMO COVER-UP

The primary reason Rather would possibly have for stonewalling the increasingly irrefutable evidence that the documents are indeed fake would be for purely partisan reasons. By all accounts, Rather may be hiding what evidence he does possess in a craven attempt to aid Kerry, who has been in full meltdown mode, particularly in the wake of one of the most successful GOP Conventions in U.S. presidential history.

Bernie Goldberg, best-selling author of “Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News” and “Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite,” told Fox News last Monday that if the source of the phony memos actually does have a connection to the Democratic National Committee or to the Kerry campaign, it will be the biggest story of the year: “It not only sinks John Kerry’s candidacy, but it is ‘lights out’ for CBS News as we know it.”

There are already new questions being raised about whether the DNC or the Kerry campaign created the forged memos with the willing assistance of Dan Rather and CBS News – although it isn’t yet clear whether Kerry or Rather were directly involved.

The bottom line with Kerry is that since he has found it increasingly difficult to run on his Senate record and proven to be extremely weak on the war on terrorism, Kerry chose to attack the trivial discrepancies in Bush’s National Guard record that have long been settled. It’s a deliberate attempt to distract attention from Kerry’s record of post-Vietnam War treason and 19-plus years of equally treasonous, anti-military voting in the Senate.

The other obvious question is: How did Dan Rather end up with the phony memos? Unless, of course, Rather had already established a closed-door relationship with the Kerry campaign, which certainly wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility:

“Any news organization that cherry picks factoids to support a preconceived prejudice and specifically rejects any and all facts that fail to support the prejudice can and should expect to get bit in the butt,” Metcalf said Monday.

“Regardless of whether to accept or reject the CBS spin, Rather refuses to even attempt to offer a ‘fair and balanced’ view of the story. Why? Even Democrat operatives acknowledge that if or when the hoax is revealed, it will be a death knell for the Kerry crowd.”

Mike Gallagher, a talk radio host, agreed that it’s the same old, anti-Bush witch-hunt routinely orchestrated by members of the elite media who sneeringly despise Bush:

“Once again, the usual suspects in the mainstream liberal press did their hatchet job on a Republican. But this time, it looked as if the shoddy research and questionable authenticity of the documents that were used came back to bite them in the fanny…It looks as if CBS blew it and, willing or not, became an accomplice to those who desperately want to attack our president and hurt his re-election chances.”

Gallagher added that, “whether Dan Rather is willing to admit it or not, his career has been tarnished and his reputation as a Republican-bashing liberal journalist confirmed, at least in the minds of millions and millions of Americans.”

Now Rather and everyone else who may be directly involved in this premeditated smear campaign against Bush is playing the blame game.

According to the Washington Times, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe claimed that neither his organization nor Kerry’s campaign leaked the documents to CBS News. In fact, McAuliffe even asininely suggested that White House adviser Karl Rove was behind the memos. McAuliffe, who called Bush “AWOL,” claimed that questions about Bush’s National Guard record supposedly show his “lack of character.” Ironically, it was McAuliffe who vehemently defended Bill Clinton’s “character” during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

These are the same Kerry operatives who threatened to investigate the Swift Boat Vets by trying to dig up dirt on them. These are also the same individuals who are working directly with Kerry, which would speak to Kerry’s possible involvement in the falsified memos – especially since Rather only interviewed Barnes and others who agreed with him, while rejecting those individuals who are now disputing Barnes’ claims.

That being said, it is particularly hypocritical of Rather and his media accomplices, as well as Kerry and the rest of the Democrats, to immediately dismiss this controversial issue, especially since they were the ones raising such a rancorous ruckus over the non-existent connection between Bush and the Swift Boat Vets. What’s more, Rather, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon.com and the rest of the media elites desperately tried to discredit them without bothering to interview them. Instead, these media elites were more interested in falsely accusing Bush of consorting with the Swift Boat Vets, while they blindly defended Kerry by refusing to expose him as the real liar.

Even the very liberal Slate.com and the Village Voice didn’t buy what Kerry was selling.

RATHER’S QUESTIONABLE TIES TO THE TEXAS DEMOCRATIC PARTY

But while Barnes has already raised over $100,000 in soft money for the Kerry campaign, Rather had been doing his part for “the cause” when he agreed to be the keynote speaker at one of Barnes’ Texas Democratic Party fund-raisers on April 5, 2001, which Rather’s daughter, Robin, just happened to organize. According to the Washington Post, Rather helped raise $20,000 for the Travis County Democratic Party in Austin, Texas, where daughter Robin was also contemplating a run for mayor.

Although Rather claimed ignorance about knowing it was a Democrat fund-raiser, much less, knowing his own daughter was managing the event, it begs many unanswered questions about Rather’s role in instigating the ‘60 Minutes’ anti-Bush smear campaign, which Rather had been anxiously pushing for several months. It also hits at the very heart of Rather’s journalistic integrity, credibility and ability to separate his transparently leftist biases from his news reporting, which is becoming his downfall.

It has already been widely reported that Barnes never used his supposed influence to get Bush into the National Guard as he told the now-disgraced Dan Rather.

In essence, Rather was so eager to try to get something on Bush that he even blatantly ignored Barnes’ own daughter, Amy Barnes Stites, who came forth last week, saying her father, Ben Barnes, lied about “pulling strings” to get Bush in the National Guard:

“I love my father very much, but he’s doing this for purely political reasons,” Stites said when she called into the Mark Davis Show last Thursday, with guest host Monica Crowley. “He is a big Kerry fund-raiser and he is writing a book also. And the [Bush story] is what he’s leading the book off with…denied this to me in 2000 that he did get Bush out (of Vietnam). Now he’s saying he did.”

When Crowley asked Stites if she believed her father had lied in his interview on ‘60 Minutes,’ she replied, “Yes, I do. I absolutely do.”

BARNES TRIES TO STOP DAUGHTER FROM EXPOSING HIS LIES

But, according to Newsmax.com, Barnes’ press secretary Kane Hinton allegedly tried to kill the interview Stites had on Sept. 10 with Sean Hannity, after Stites told Crowley that her father had admitted privately to her that the allegations he made against Bush were false:

“[My father] told me in 2000 that he did not help Bush get into the National Guard, because I asked him during the election of 2000 when this first came out, and he said no,” Stites told Hannity. “And then in 2004, just about three months ago, he told me that he did and that he – in fact, he was writing a book, and kind of an autobiographical book.”

Hinton even lied to get the interview by posing as Amy’s “friend” when she tried to stop Amy’s interview with Hannity:

“[Hinton] called our studio saying she was a friend of Amy’s,” Hannity said. “She canceled the interview on your behalf,” he told Stites, who appeared, despite Hinton’s attempted cancellation.

Moreover, Newsmax.com added that Retired Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, Killian’s supervisor at the Guard, said that he felt that CBS News misled him about the documents they supposedly uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were “handwritten” and after CBS read him excerpts he said, “well if he wrote them that’s what he felt.” Hodges was the source that CBS News told the Associated Press was “the trump card” in purportedly “substantiating” Rather’s false claims.

But according to Opinionjournal.com’s John Fund, Hodges, whom ‘60 Minutes’ claimed had authenticated the memos, said that when he was read them over the phone, he assumed they were handwritten and “wasn’t told that CBS didn’t have the originals. He now says he doesn’t believe the memos are genuine.”

According to Townhall.com columnist Cal Thomas, when Hodges said they “sounded” like they were written by Killian, “CBS took that as confirmation of their authenticity.”

But CBS News, frantically scrambling to defend its hemorrhaging defense, has since accused Hodges of changing his story.

The truth is, if Rather was really interested in seeking the truth and getting to the bottom of the phony memos, he wouldn’t have excluded the interviews that refuted Barnes’ false claims, especially Roome’s testimony, which Rather’s producer had deemed to be “pretty pro-Bush.”

Rather, in a maniac effort to save his plunging credibility, is now trying to discredit his own sources by maintaining the “authenticity” of phony memos.

BLOGGERS DO WHAT DAN RATHER WOULDN’T: EXPOSE THE TRUTH

But, in the end, it took the alternative media in cyberspace to finally get to the truth about the phony memos, namely bloggers at Powerlineblog.com, Littlegreenfootballs.com and Freerepublic.com, who immediately spotted the discrepancies between the typewriter style and the Microsoft word-processing font style in the bogus memos:

“What the bloggers and their audiences did was call into profound question the authenticity of four documents proudly trumpeted by CBS News in a much-heralded investigative report,” said the New York Post’s John Podhoretz. “Liberals went wild with glee about the story, especially after the onslaught on John Kerry’s Vietnam record by his fellow Swift-boat veterans.”

National Review columnist Hugh Hewitt, who almost single-handedly spearheaded the blogging movement, commented that bloggers, which include Ph.D’s, former military officers and other working professionals, “have been overwhelmed with e-mails from active-duty and retired military who scoff at the form of the memos.”

Podhoretz added that leftist blogger Kevin Drum swallowed Dan Rather’s phony memo story, hook, line and sinker, adamantly believing Rather’s account:

“Drum simply assumed that the documents were above-board. So did the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which put the story on its front page on Thursday,” Podhoretz said.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty, who writes the “Kerry Spot,” warned: “CBS had better have one heck of a defense for this.”

New York Newsday’s Jim Pinkerton said: “Sept. 9, 2004, will be remembered as a paradigm-shifting day in media history. That was the day the “blogosphere” took down CBS News.”

As Ann Coulter commented regarding the gossip mills of Kitty Kelley and others who have long been discredited for spreading vicious lies about Bush: “[F]or the past few years it has been the Internet that keeps dissecting and discrediting the gossip and innuendo that the major media put out.”

Is it any wonder that Dan Rather and the rest of the arrogantly overpaid media elite openly despise the honest, independent media of the Fox News Channel, WorldNetDaily.com and Newsmax.com, which provides news that circumvents the filters and gatekeepers of the leftist media?

RATHER IGNORES FAMILY MEMBERS WHO DISPUTED PHONY MEMOS

The newest revelation of CBS News and Dan Rather possessing such phony memos and later vehemently defending their authenticity is especially suspect since Rather had deliberately excluded two pivotal sources from his anti-Bush hit piece (which his producer had contacted two weeks prior to the ’60 Minutes II’ interview) – the son and widow of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who commanded Bush and had nothing but glowing things to say about Bush when he was a young fighter pilot.

The truth is, Bush did six years of National Guard service in five years, which was six times longer than what Kerry served before his early exit from Vietnam – and there are no secrets to that, as Rather alleges.

In fact, Gary Killian, son of the late Jerry Killian, told Sean Hannity on Sept. 10 that Dean Roome, Bush’s former roommate, who was prepared to also vouch for Bush, was suddenly cut from Rather’s segment because ‘60 Minutes II’ producer Mary Mapes told Killian that “we see him as pretty pro-Bush.”

(Mapes is the one who sat on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal photos for several months before eventually breaking the story, while Rather took all the credit, which is yet another example of how Rather seeks to openly humiliate President Bush.)

Killian and his step-mother, Marjorie Connell, are now questioning Rather’s false claims regarding the authenticity of the newly surfaced documents – documents that Rather obviously tried to use to humiliate Bush, while ignoring John Kerry’s treasonous slander against U.S. troops upon his return from Vietnam and his anti-military voting record.

In fact, Connell said the memos were “a farce” and that her late husband considered Bush an excellent fighter pilot.

According to Newsmax.com and this very revealing interview with Hannity, Killian, who Dan Rather claimed was the author of the memos, said it wasn’t part of his dad’s management style to write such questionable memos, much less, keep anything that suspect in his possession.

Killian and Connell had already told CBS News that the superscript font style “th” in “187th” in the doctored memos questioning Bush’s Guard status – and whether he had a physical exam – didn’t match up with the manual typewriter style used in the 1970s. But CBS News only contacted handwriting experts, at the exclusion of other hired experts.

KILLIAN’S FORMER SECRETARY CONFIRMS MEMOS ARE FAKE

Moreover, the Dallas Morning News reported that Killian’s secretary, Marian Carr Knox, who’s even a professed Bush-hater and was clearly coached by Rather in the interview to say something obviously slanderous about Bush, said she never typed those memos and that the memos were clearly forged:

“These are not real,” she told the Morning News after examining copies of the disputed memos for the first time. “They’re not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him.”

Knox, 86, also told the Morning News that the typeface on the documents didn’t match either of the two typewriters that she used during her time at the Texas National Guard, and identified those machines as a mechanical Olympia, which was replaced by an IBM Selectric in the early 1970s.

According to Dallas Morning News reporter Peter Slover, Knox, who worked from 1957 to 1979 at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, said she prided herself on “meticulous typing and that the memos first disclosed by CBS News last week were not her work”:

“She said that the culture of the time was that men didn’t type office-related documents, and she expressed doubt that Lt. Col. Killian would have typed the memos,” Slover wrote. “She said she would typically type his memos from his handwritten notes, which she would then destroy.”

Gary Killian also said his father didn’t know how to type and wouldn’t have drafted such inflammatory letters, even if he did know how to type, despite Rather’s insistence that the memos came from Killian’s personal files:

“It was not the nature of my father to keep private files like this, nor would it have been in his own interest to do so,” Gary Killian told ABC News about his dad. “We don’t know where the documents come from. They didn’t come from any family member.”

Connell told ABC News last Thursday that the wording of the memos was also very suspect to her: “I just can’t believe these are his words.”

Like her son, Connell added that her late husband did not type, and though he did take notes, they were usually on scraps of paper: “He was a person who did not take copious notes. He carried everything in his mind.”

What’s more, Rather’s claim that handwriting expert Marcel Matley authenticated the signature was also debunked since Rather already knew that Matley couldn’t authenticate a copied signature, which was also in doubt, especially since Rather and CBS News can’t seem to find the original “memo.” Also, Matley only examined the signatures, which also differed with each “document.”

In addition, according to Fox News, Matley isn’t even certified by the National Board of Document Examiners, nor does he have any experience in document analysis or training by any law enforcement agency. This shoots yet another hole in Rather’s sinking ship.

But on Sept. 11, that never stopped CBSNews.com from trying to spin the story by claiming the memos were based on a “preponderance of evidence,” without bothering to include the Killian family’s interviews or other handwriting experts that have come forth to dispute them.

In fact, CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards flatly declined to tell the Associated Press last Friday when asked about questions raised by experts who examined copies of the memos. Edwards also declined to provide the names of the other experts that CBS News consulted who disputed the memos.

Besides, Metcalf said that not only did Bush’s records indicate that he exceeded the required number of drills of each and every year of service, Bush even asked twice to participate in a flight program, which would have resulted in combat duty in Vietnam but was rejected because the Vietnam War was winding down at the time of his request. In the end, Bush received an honorable discharge after six years of excellent service.

TEXAS NATIONAL GUARD DIRECTOR BACKS BUSH, DEBUNKS MEMOS

The Washington Times on Sunday reported that former Texas National Guard Director Earl W. Lively, who was there at the time Bush served, said there wasn’t any doubt in his mind that the documents that ‘60 Minutes II” obtained were phony.

“They’re forged as hell,” Lively told the Washington Times. “There’s no way that Jerry Killian would have written what they’ve come up with.”

Specifically addressing Rather’s phony memo story and the deceptive way Rather and ’60 Minutes’ were trying to set up not only President Bush but Jerry Killian, Lively told Fox News on Sept. 13 that he very much resented “someone trying to put words in the mouth of a dead man for political purposes.”

Yet Rather has stood obstinately by the authenticity of the documents that purportedly showed that Killian felt pressure from his own superior officer, Col. Walter “Buck” Staudt, to “sugarcoat” Bush’s record.

Lively also told the Washington Times that Staudt was honorably discharged in March 1972, which was nearly 18 months before the date of the forged Killian memos, which is also in direct contrast to the false claims of Rather, who offered no apology on CNN:

“Not even discussed, nor should it be,” Rather said last Friday. “I want to make clear to you, I want to make clear to you if I have not made clear to you, that this story is true, and that more important questions than how we got the story, which is where those who don’t like the story would like the emphasis, more important question is, what are the answers to the questions raised in the story.”

Moreover, the same order obtained by the Dallas Morning News also had shown that “Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972. CBS News had reported that a memo in which Staudt was described as interfering with officers’ negative evaluations of Bush’s service, was dated Aug. 18, 1973,” which means Staudt wouldn’t have had a say in the matter.

Earlier, Rather also told the Morning News on Sept. 10 that “he had heard nothing to make him question the legitimacy of the memos. He attributed the backlash to partisan politics and competitive journalism”:

“This story is true. The questions we raised about then-Lieutenant Bush’s National Guard service are serious and legitimate,” Rather said. “Until and unless someone shows me definitive proof that they are not, I don’t see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill.”

“Mr. Rather, you have it completely backwards. The responsibility is yours to get it right in the first place,” said Brent Bozell, director of the Media Research Center.

But this obviously shoots another hole in Rather’s faulty claims, since Rather knew that his CBS News producers had already interviewed Killian’s family members, who disputed the claims of the memos, but eventually ended up on the cutting room floor.

What’s more, the New York Post contacted a top CBS News official, who refused to be identified, and asked if they knew whether John Kerry and his campaign were behind the forged memos: “I can’t answer that question,” the CBS News official said and abruptly hung up the phone.

RATHER’S PHONY MEMO STORY MAY END CAREER OF PROPAGANDA

In his never-ending political antipathy for our commander-in-chief and the rest of the Bush family, Rather, who wears his partisanship on his sleeve, may have gotten in too deep to get out of this politically motivated smear this time around. It may even signal the end of Rather’s 40-plus year career as an anti-Republican propagandist – and a ruthlessly partisan media hack that has taken great pleasure in slanting the news on a nightly basis without ethical forethought or conscience, in order to further a fellow Democrat’s self-aggrandizing, political opportunistic career path, namely John Kerry.

While Rather plays the victim in this twisted mix of media elite arrogance and political partisanship, all signs are still appearing to point to the Kerry campaign as the alleged source of this anti-Bush hoax, as Rather’s media friends at CNN and the New York Times provide the spin behind the spin. It’s a tale of how the ones entrusted to deliver the story ended up becoming the story. Like the fraudulent reporting scandals that have rocked the already shaky foundations of CNN, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, USA Today, Reuters and the Associated Press, Dan Rather has also proven time and again that he can no longer be trusted to deliver the unvarnished truth about events of global significance, since he has demonstrated to be completely incapable of reporting the news fairly, accurately and objectively.

Undoubtedly, the possible Kerry campaign/Dan Rather-orchestrated assault on Bush and his National Guard record shows all the signs of a politically motivated ambush. While revelations about CBS News’ and John Kerry’s likely involvement in this anti-Bush trap are still surfacing, Dan Rather, who has vehemently denied any willing cooperation with Kerry operatives, isn’t exactly liking the taste of his own medicine. In fact, the 72-year old anchorman, who has been trashing Republican administrations for 40-plus years in the form of fabricated sources, spiked stories and slanted newscasts, squirmed as he defended himself on the fellow Democrat-friendly CNN. During the “interview,” Rather appeared noticeably shaky and even rude in his responses. In addition, the fact that Rather and CBS News didn’t have anything official to back up their defense of the phony memos, smacks of journalistic impropriety.

In actuality, Rather purposely ignored the truth about the phony memos and the Killian interviews that have already demolished Rather’s malfeasance because Rather likely knew he came across something that would politically hurt Kerry if the truth ever got out.

Rather, whose network was the sole media proprietor of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal photos that the entire Bush-hating media have been obsessing over for more than five months now, was the one who held onto the photos and unleashed them when he likely thought they would do the most political damage to Bush. It’s yet another example of the reckless irresponsibility of arrogant media elitists, who care more about nailing Bush than preventing the further endangerment of our troops.

As a result of the media elite’s outcry over the Abu Ghraib brouhaha, they ironically and unjustly portrayed our troops as the “real” enemy of freedom and the prisoners – many of whom were suspected terrorists – as the “real” victims of a so-called “U.S.-led aggression,” which many erroneously claimed was led by Bush and Rumsfeld.

Subsequently, terrorists in Fallujah, Iraq, ambushed four U.S. employees and burned, mutilated, dragged and hung their bodies over a bridge, where they openly cheered in the streets. Like the many other scandals Rather and the rest of the media elites tried to use to destroy Bush, this one was perhaps the deadliest, most anti-American backlash that Rather has ever been party to creating – and all with the overall goal of taking out Bush in November.

Only now, what Rather didn’t count on in his calculated haste to smear President Bush once again, while refusing to tell the truth about John Kerry’s Vietnam and senatorial records, is that the smoking gun this Clinton-worshipping anchor had hoped would bring down Bush is actually shooting blanks. The one story Rather had hoped would sink Bush’s re-election bid has become rife with deception and malice, since the memos Rather had made the focal point of his anti-Bush hit piece are now in question. Rather, with all his waffling of the truth, may not be able to spin his way out of this one.

What’s more, Democratic strategist Pat Caddell even admitted to Fox News last Friday that if the documents Rather aired are officially confirmed to be forgeries, as alleged by some of CBS News’ own experts (of which they blatantly ignored), the presidential race “is over” for John Kerry.

“It would be the end of the race,” Caddell told Fox News Live. “It would be the end of the race,” he repeated.

FORMER CBS NEWS REPORTER CAUTIONED RATHER ABOUT BIAS

Bernie Goldberg, a former CBS News correspondent and Emmy-winning journalist, had cautioned Dan Rather for years about the CBS News anchor’s political bias and has been sounding the alarm to the rest of the liberal media establishment.

Goldberg, a professed liberal, told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that he has “never seen a more one-sided piece in the history of television” regarding Rather championing the phony memos without providing any criticism or denunciation of them.

“It was absolutely disgraceful,” Goldberg said of Rather and ’60 Minutes’ for providing only those individuals who would back up CBS News’ position, while leaving any opposing side in the dust.

According to Newsmax.com, Goldberg called it “ironic that Dan Rather – a journalist who helped bring President Richard Nixon down – is now behaving like President Nixon did during Watergate.”

“It’s kind of sad,” said Goldberg, adding that CBS is circling the wagons, and as for Dan Rather – “he’s going to hope this goes away.”

As a result of Goldberg’s whistle-blowing, former CBS News colleagues have shunned him, especially Rather, who said he would never forgive Goldberg.

RATHER CARES MORE ABOUT SINKING BUSH THAN EXPOSING KERRY

Like Kerry, Rather has backed himself into a corner and is finding it extremely difficult to tell the truth since he’s been so used to spinning it for so many years. In a Michael Moore-like move, Rather has deliberately fudged with the facts to try to give John Kerry a political advantage over Bush. But like Kerry, Rather seems to care little about the truth, especially if it favors President Bush.

It also seems that Rather and Kerry are more concerned with what Bush did over 30 years ago in flight school than what 19 homicidal maniacs did with four planes on Sept. 11.

It’s reminiscent of pre-9/11, during the Clinton impeachment trial, when the media elites were too obsessed with running damage control for Bill Clinton to pay any attention to the bigger picture of known terror cells already existing in the U.S. during the mid- to late 1990s. Clinton had made this nation so weak through his own lusts and ignoring of the warning signs of the imminent danger of terrorism. Democrats like John Kerry, John Edwards, Al Gore and Ted Kennedy had weakened our military through intelligence and defense cuts and were too concerned about racial profiling too enforce the Reagan-imposed airport security measures that could have thwarted 9/11.

Today, the media elites, in their attempt to bring down President Bush out of revenge for the Clinton impeachment and Florida 2000, are unwittingly trying to weaken our resolve around the world and put our troops at greater risk. Although the strong moral character of George W. Bush will never fall prey to the weaknesses of Bill Clinton that left this country vulnerable to the six terrorist attacks throughout the 1990s and into 2000, the media elites are still waiting with baited breath to find a crack in Bush’s moral armor.

John Kerry has neither the character nor the backbone to take the reins of Bush’s moral resolve in fighting global terrorism. What’s more, Kerry’s ever-changing positions and indecisiveness would leave our country extremely vulnerable to the terrorist attacks of the 1990s, and would likely continue the Left’s lull of the pre-9/11 mentality of Bill Clinton: That terrorism is a domestic issue and should be handed over to the next presidential administration, which is exactly what Clinton did when he left Bush to inherit both an economic recession and the backlash of terrorism caused by Clinton’s moral and political impotence.

Therefore, Dick Cheney has been vindicated for the accurate observation he made in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sept. 8 about Kerry making this country susceptible to terrorist attacks, to which the media elites had a conniption fit. It’s because they care more about ridding the world of the Bush administration than they do about ridding the world of terrorism and telling the truth about the moral weakness and ineptitude of John Kerry.

Yet, while the leftist media lashed out at Cheney for his correct comments (based on Kerry’s weak military voting record, as Zell Miller masterfully spelled out at the GOP Convention), the media elites heralded Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin when he called Bush “a liar” and blatantly ignored the fact that Harkin lied about serving in Vietnam.

The fact is, the Kerry campaign is getting so desperate to have John Kerry respond to each and every comment Bush makes between now and the election that they may be trying to cover their tracks regarding the phony memos by launching new attack ads this week, which are aimed at further discrediting Bush’s National Guard service. It’s the reason the Kerry campaign, in their newest sophomoric and asininely vicious attack campaign “Operation Fortunate Son,” is further disparaging Bush’s Guard service – since Kerry can’t run on his record and completely relies on smear tactics to try to get ahead of Bush.

(The Kerry campaign, proving again that they can’t come up with anything original and has to steal to get what they want, pilfered the title from a book called “Fortunate Son,” whose author is a convicted felon with discredited stories of Bush’s alleged drug use.)

In essence, it already appears that Rather’s friends in the press are helping him out by continuing to slant the headlines against Bush (MSNBC.com, Sept. 16):

  • 2 Americans kidnapped in Iraq
  • U.S. intel pessimistic on Iraq
  • Annan says Iraq was illegal

(Another crucial side note: Annan is involved in the U.N. Oil for Food Scandal that helped finance Saddam Hussein’s terror networks. About an hour later, MSNBC.com put quotes around the word ‘illegal,’ probably in case anyone accuses them of bias.)

In effect, with the memo-obsessed media elite’s pounding of Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft for their so-called “secret” memos, it’s hypocritical for them to flatly ignore these phony memos that not only may implicate Dan Rather and CBS News, but also John Kerry and his ephemeral campaign.

Besides, in his recent ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Kerry, Rather never asked him about his anti-American conduct; his secret meeting with North Vietnamese communist leaders; marching with Viet Cong communists as he scoffed at the flag and the U.S.; his words and picture being enshrined in the Vietnamese Communist Museum in Saigon; his 1971 Senate testimony that was used as anti-American propaganda in torturing U.S. POWs; or why he slandered his comrades with war crime atrocity allegations, where he called them “monsters,” “baby killers,” “rapists” and “pillagers,” in “the fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan” that Kerry himself had admitted to committing.

The bottom line is the leftist media refuse to see John Kerry as a traitor to this country. As Kerry continues to re-write the Vietnam War, there are Vietnam veterans who remember Kerry’s treason and seek to right the wrongs that Kerry continues to perpetrate on them. But Rather, who was more polite to Saddam Hussein – than he’s ever been to any Republican – when he went to Baghdad in February 2002 to embarrass Bush by kissing up to the murderous dictator, will continue to spin this sordid phony memo story in Kerry’s favor.

Rather knows he’s been caught and now he’s squirming in his anchor chair.

KERRY MAY BE WORSE THAN GORE AT DIRTY ELECTION TRICKS

Like Al Gore, who proclaimed during his 36-day heist of the Florida electorate: “I am not like George Bush. If he wins or loses, life goes on. I’ll do anything to win,” John Kerry is not about to sit back and let Bush rightfully win. Because Kerry has made the White House his ultimate career goal, Kerry may be even worse than Gore, if that’s possible. Kerry will likely squash anyone that gets in his way, as he’s doing this very moment.

The way Kerry is reacting right now to his own record being laid bare for all to see is proof enough that he is unfit to command. It’s because the media elites haven’t done their jobs that the independent media are gaining in prominence and exposing Kerry.

Opinionjournal.com’s James Taranto observed on Sept. 13 that there’s “no way of knowing who CBS’s source is, but it’s certainly a matter of great public interest if the Kerry campaign or the Democratic National Committee has perpetrated a fraud, especially one so shockingly incompetent.”

With the top attack dogs in the leftist media willingly turning into John Kerry’s personal lapdogs, we no longer have to wonder which side they’re on.

But Rather isn’t the only one blatantly campaigning for Kerry via his evening “skews” program. From Chris Matthews’ pro-Kerry meltdowns and the New York Times’ Democrat-friendly diatribes to Aaron Brown’s childish invectives, the Left’s media allies are pulling out all the stops in their across-the-board defense of John Kerry, who has reduced his entire campaign to name-calling sessions, rhetorical rants and asinine tirades.

But while many of us on the Right know the mainstream media are collectively biased, there are still a lot of great reporters within these organizations who value their credibility and will hopefully expose this likely Democrat-fueled scandal.

RATHER STILL STANDS BY PHONY MEMOS, LASHES OUT AT BLOGGERS

Back in 2000, when Rather could have cared less about hanging chads and more about trying to pin the Al Gore-initiated election fiasco on Bush, Rather is now doing the opposite with this CBS News debacle that has all the earmarks of an orchestrated, Clintonite-bloated Kerry campaign trick. Seeing that Rather also ignored the story of former Clintonite Sandy Berger, who stole classified documents from the National Archives, which is a felony, it’s no surprise that Rather is secretly hoping his fake Bush story sticks.

With false accusations still coming from the Left about Bush supposedly being dishonest about Iraq, it appears the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media are the ones with egg on their faces. If Dan Rather does not come forward and tell the truth, this Democrat-created scandal could very well be John Kerry’s Watergate and all the damage control Rather can muster won’t be able to save Kerry nor him. Rather, in the end, may be getting a dose of his own medicine after years of deceptive reporting.

It’s certainly not the first time Rather has aided and abetted a prominent Democrat: In his June interview with Bill Clinton, Rather allowed Clinton to lie his way out of how he allowed Osama bin Laden to slip through his fingers on at least three occasions. While the facts are still surfacing about the phony memos, thanks to an alert blogosphere and other independent media that are doing the job that media leftists like Rather have refused to do, Rather’s close media confidants are taking up the slack by fiercely defending him.

As a result, Rather has been vehemently defending himself, lashing out at the bloggers, which former CBS News executive Jonathan Klein arrogantly labeled as the average “guy sitting in his living room in their pajamas writing.”

Well, pajamas or no pajamas, they exposed Rather’s fraudulence and are to be congratulated. Too bad they don’t have Rather’s $8 million-per-year salary. If it takes guys in their pajamas to expose the fraudulence of one of the so-called most “respected” “journalists” in the news business, what does that say about the current liberal media establishment? Like John Kerry, they so arrogant and beyond reproach that they don’t want to be held accountable and choose to hide behind their “institutions”?

After all, over the course of just a few days, we’ve seen Rather looking more and more guilty of being a possible Kerry co-conspirator in a Watergate-style scandal that is likely to sink the Kerry campaign and find Rather starting his retirement a little earlier than planned. The result of this media dereliction is exactly why the mainstream media find themselves in their present quandary – and why the independent media are increasingly exposing these media useful idiots as the same liars and phonies they seek to protect.

As Kerry continues to self-destruct and the media elites provide him with endless damage control, look for President Bush to wipe the floor with John Kerry during the upcoming debates. Like Rather, Kerry will continue to be exposed for a fraud before Nov. 2.

Last Friday, Rather still tried to defend his fraudulence by borrowing Hillary Clinton’s tactic of blaming her and her husband’s dishonesty on a “vast right-wing conspiracy” she coined during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment hearings:

“Today, on the Internet and elsewhere, some people, including many who are partisan political operatives, concentrated not on the key questions of the overall story, but on the documents that were part of the support of the story,” Rather blathered.

“So it doesn’t matter if the “memos” are a fraud?” asked Media Research Center director Brent Bozell.

What Rather fails to grasp is that he’s the very one who refuses to concentrate on the key questions of the story, which are: Why did you avoid the other sources and handwriting experts who openly disputed the memos and why can’t you be honest about it?

The truth is, there is no story within the Bush memos since the memos are phony – and since Bush’s National Guard record was settled years ago. The real story is that Rather has now become the real story – and the story behind the story. But, like Kerry, Rather’s too arrogant to admit when he’s wrong.

What’s missing at CBS News are the Edward R. Murrows of the news business, who didn’t sit before the TelePrompTer looking through it with their political agenda as the lens, but who actually cared about digging for and reporting the truth, no matter which side of the political aisle they sat on in those days.

As Rather signs off each week night, saying “And that’s just part of our world,” he’s got that right because viewers don’t even get the whole story in Dan’s part of the world.

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SOFTBALL WITH DAN RATHER – STAR PITCHER FOR CLINTON’S POLITICAL GAMES

Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”

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