basso posted the following from CNN: <blockquote>In a written statement, CBS said Bill Burkett, a retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, has admitted that he deliberately misled a CBS News producer, "giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."</blockquote> Is this convoluted, or is it just me? In other words, "someone misled someone about something, but we're still trying to decide who should take the rap." How sad that this should come from the network of Edward R. Murrow, Fred Friendly, and Walter Cronkite.
From an interview with Dan Rather, published by Broadcasting & Cable on Aug. 30: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/ar...sults&text=rather&referral=SUPP&referral=SUPP -- Q: Is the media doing a good job covering the 2004 election? Or is there too much attention on the Swift Boat flap? A: I would like us to concentrate more on issues and less on campaign process. But there is always a tendency to go with what's sensational. Also, we're human, and humans keep making the same mistakes. In the end, what difference does it make what one candidate or the other did or didn't do during the Vietnam War? In some ways, that war is as distant as the Napoleonic campaigns. What's far more import is this: Do they have an exit strategy for Iraq? If so, what is it? How will they address the national deficit? And what are the chances their plans will work?
Well, I can't "proof" [sic] it to you, but now you guys are reduced to arguing a technicality. CBS aired fabricated documents. This is a victory for TRUTH in America. It is a victory for George W Bush in the liberals' sad attempt to smear him.
It still makes my stomach turn when I think about that bj Rather gave Saddam on the air just before the war.
There is a huge difference between airing fabricated documents and actually fabricating the documents. I suspect you are also terribly upset about all those CBS affiliates who aired those swift boat ads where the eye witnesses were not even there.
You mean like when NBC's Dateline used explosives to show that some SUV (can't remember which) gas tanks could blow up?
This is a classic example of a perception difference. You guys are both right, from your own perspectives. But this little portion of this thread is not about your perceptions. It is about mine. Mine, mine, mine! I do not think there is a size 4 huge difference between the two. Maybe a size 1 or 1 and a half. The brass at CBS (who I work for) did not do their homework before airing the story. It is not as wrong as creating the documents themselves but close. The reason it is so obvious that it is almost as wrong is how sh!tty the fakes were. OMG. That was pathetic. Horribly pathetic. Anyone with an 8th grade education could tell they were fake. They wantd them to be real sooooo bad that they didn't authenticate them. Damned near criminal.
Uh, oh look who's name came up, Mr. Lockhart advisor to Kerrey spoke to the guy a couple days before he released the document. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/21/cbs.kerry.adviser/index.html This is getting better and better
why is CBS coordinating anti-bush activities with the kerry campaign? do they do this sort of this for BC04 too? maybe CBS should just register as a 527.
and this timeline, and commentary from NRO seems pretty damning...it's not watergate yet, but getting damned close. kinda ironic considering that Rather, IIRC, played some role in exposing the Watergate scandal. -- So what's going on here? Okay, according to what's being pieced together, Burkett wanted to play Kerry campaign strategist, and to get the bigwigs at the Kerry campaign to use his memos that he, apparently, thought would be convincing. Mapes (presuming this female producer Lockhart is talking about is Mapes) wanted the memos. Burkett offers to trade the memos for an introduction to the Kerry campaign. Mapes calls the Kerry camp and eventually reaches Lockhart. Lockhart agrees to the favor, since when a "60 Minutes" producer asks you for a favor, you do it. (Building good relations with the press and all that.) Lockhart talks with Burkett... ...and are these two men being honest about what was and what wasn't discussed? Let's look on Nexis for the first reference to "Operation Fortunate Son." We find an AP story from September 9, 2004. Seizing on 30-year-old memos and memories, Sen. John Kerry's operatives are painting an unflattering portrait of President Bush as the "fortunate son" who used family connections to dodge the Vietnam War and then lied about it... "Two things: One, he didn't tell the truth and that's not going to go away," said Howard Wolfson, a strategist dispatched to the DNC by Kerry's campaign to go negative on Bush. "Second, it begins to paint a picture of a very fortunate son who uses connections and pulls strings for special favors. That is a theme running through the man's life." The DNC has nicknamed its effort "Operation Fortunate Son" after a Creedence Clearwater Revival anti-war anthem from the 1960s. The song speaks of the privileged few, "born silver spoon in hand," who send others to war. Bush is not the "senator's son" written about in the song, but he's the son of a former president who served in the House during the Vietnam War. Former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, a Kerry supporter, says he helped Bush and the sons of other wealthy families get into the Texas National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam. As a young lieutenant, Bush was "talking to someone upstairs" and trying to "get out of coming to drill," according to newly unearthed memos by the late Col. Jerry B. Killian, squadron commander for Bush in Texas. The CBS story based on the memos the evening of Sept. 8. Are we to believe that the Democratic National Committee put together "Operation Fortunate Son," in which these memos are front and center, entirely in the hours after the CBS report, and yet had their campaign ready so that these memos are referred to in the first words of the AP story Sept. 9? Are we to believe that the DNC didn't know ahead of time what was in those memos, and how they could be used to attack the president? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a lawyer. Would this qualify as circumstantial evidence that CBS and the DNC were collaborating on using the memos before the story ran? And would this explain why Terry McAuliffe said yesterday that no one at the DNC or Kerry campaign, 'had anything to do with the preparations of the documents,' but said nothing about the distribution or dissemination of the memo? Oh — and did no one at the DNC look at these documents and say, "Gee, these look like they were written with Microsoft Word"?
IMO the quality was too bad for there to be any conspiracy. It was a CBS oversight, they ran it because someone was blinded by exuberance.
There is no excuse for not vetting these documents, but it is widely known that Dan Rather has it in for the Bush family, but only about 80% as much as he had it in for Richard Nixon.
There is a difference between the DNC knowing they were fake and the DNC spreading them. What a stupid connection. Does the RNC not know about the mass e-mails that are fakes that get posted on this bbs from time to time? I'm sure they do, but that doesn't mean that they are the ones sending them, and creating them. Burkett did it, and so far there is nothing to show that anyone at the Kerry campaign or the DNC had anything to do with the creating and distributing of them. They were faxed from a Kinkos in Texas. It's not even close to watergate.
you've missed the point. how did the DNC even know the memos existed, much less what they contained? the 60"2 segment aired sept 8, in the evening. the DNC ad campaign launched the next day. they had to have foreknowledge.
They knew because CBS wasn't the only place that Burkett shopped them around. I don't doubt that he shopped them to the DNC, who didn't pay much attention to them. The research group at the DNC would definitely have looked them over, thus knowing what they contained. You will also notice that Kerry, and the DNC remained silent about the documents the whole time. Burkett may have even told them that CBS would be running a story with those documents. This doesn't point out a thing.
the memos, and footage from the 60" interview are featured in the "fortunate son" ad. if it quacks like a duck...
I vowed to myself a year ago that I would only to read the D&D and refrain from posting in it. However, for both sides who are referencing Ben Barnes, I have seen no mention that Ben was convicted in a large scale swindle. Hence, his credibility may be questionable. Now I go back to lurking.
