Letters to the Editor
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re: Re:re: statute of limitations
pantanal,
"Actually, there's evidence that bush didn't report to duty. The woman who housed him in Alabama, a friend of the Bush family, laughed when asked about this. She said that he never did and that the National Guard duty was never even brought up. Apparently, he was spending his time getting drunk and being obnoxious, the story of his life. How difficult would that be to bring up in a desertion trial?"
Not difficult at all...assuming the woman is willing to testify that she KNEW he never attended drill weekend and corroborating evidence can show that he never showed up during the drill weekends he was to have allegedly missed...AND that there was no one at the drill weekends willing to testify that he WAS there.
The point is, you have to bring things like this into court AND the defense has to have the opportunity to cross-examine the witness.
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Malkin:
"...Selectrics existed with proportional font and special character balls could be installed that of course had super- and sub-scripts."
So what? Who disputed that? You aren't addressing the argument, which is that documents created on IBM Selectrics cannot be recreated in MS Word at the default settings. However the disputed documents CAN be easily recreated in MS Word. Don't rely on authority; try it yourself.
As I pointed out, the hardest thing to do is the centered headings. Very difficult to do on a proportional font typewriter, but very easy in MS Word. The disputed documents have centered headings which are not only PEFECTLY CENTERED but IDENTICAL to each other. And yet they were supposed to have been typed months apart. That can't be done on any kind of typewriter, proportional or monospaced.
The documents are shit and so is the thinking that supports them. Blumenthal is making a huge mistake by relying on the word of some authority and not checking the documents himself.
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I Stand by Dan
Thank God for Dan Rather and Mary Mapes. Finally, someone has shown the cohones to simply tell the truth. Our corporately-owned media are co-conspirators in the lies and cover-ups of the Bush administration. There is blood on their hands. If they had a conscience they would fess up (I won't hold my breath).
CBS should lose its FCC license. They no longer fulfill the requirement of providing news and information to the American public, so their use of OUR airwaves must be suspended. (I won't hold my breath on that one either.)
I hope this lawsuit brings vindication to Rather and every journalist and researcher that painstakingly sought out the facts of Bush' so-called military service. That drunken fool is the president of the United States. I can't help thinking that if the truth never comes out, our country will be forever lost.
I weep for my nation's pride, integrity and spirit -and long for it to be restored.
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Dan Rather stands by his story
Thanks for the article, Mr. Blumenthal, and Salon for "allowing
it". There is a sorry - correction: tragic, dearth of investigative reporting coming from TV News, Murdoch-controlled
et al!! Our collective knowledge seems to be reduced to
politically correct "sound bites". No wonder we've had to endure this current administration for so many years!
Pat in Idaho
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Good for you, Dan!
Mr. Rather has had such a high standing in the broadcasting industry for many years, He is a monument that his colleagues admire and try to emulate. He has been bombarded; he was fired from his job at CBS after so many years of service; his career record, tarnished; all at the hands of CBS and G.W. Bush.
I applaud Mr. Rather "sticking to his guns", rather than folding over, stuck under the weight of CBS or G. W. Bush. He is an ethical man who should be commended for his nobility and honesty. He has always reported the truth, no matter how horrible or controversial it was.
G.W. Bush is an ineffective "leader", a liar (which has been the reality since he's been in office), and a sociopath. CBS News is no longer a respected institution of truth: it is now yet another corporation that was built on lies and deceit. CBS should've stood behind Rather and supported him in his conviction of reporting the truth. The real events have become silenced, only the lies being reported. We aren't stupid! We know what's going on here, because it's going on in everything in the United States, from the government to the formation of corporations, getting rid of anyone who gets in their way. The goddamn government is a corporation, for Christ's sake.
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Just Deserves Repeating
All this technical debate about how the documnents were produced is TOTALLY BESIDE THE POINT! Whether the documents were valid or not, the following facts remain:
. The key witness asserts that the INFORMATION in them is TRUE, and there is additional corroborating evidence. The underlying story is true. Therefore, the man who got himself elected by cultivating an image of military toughness while his campaign denigrated the service of others, who led us into a disastrous war under premises that have been demonstrated to be false and who staged a carrier landing and posed in a flight suit in order to bolster false claims of success in that war is revealed to have used his family's pull to get into the National Guard in order to avoid going to Vietnam and then SHIRKED a good part of his obligation.
. CBS News failed in its obligation to report the truth and inform the public of the significant facts they needed to make an informed decision. They were more afraid of offending those in power and the effect that might have on their financial bottom line than they were of failing in their basic function.
Those are the things we need to keep the focus on! I fervently hope that Rather's suit will serve to bring the truth to light in such a way that all will finally be forced to acknowledge it.
-- debpet
I say forget any grand conspiracy theories -- this seems more like a case of Bush going AWOL and the commanders just kind of shrugging their shoulders and not doing anything about it because of who George's dad was.
At the time the thinking must have been, "Who cares?"
Once George got into politics years later THEN embarrassing records started getting lost, misplaced, shredded, etc. I'm sure some people did it just to protect their own ass because they allowed George to break the rules and they didn't want to get in trouble -- others may have "lost" records as a favor to George.
The bottom line is the guy DID go AWOL. You really don't need a "grand global conspiracy" to explain it. All that's required is that George had a powerful daddy and the commanders figured, eh, why bother going after George for not showing up? They either didn't care or they looked the other way as a favor. Bigger fish to fry and who cares. Years later, however, when people started trying to hide the fact that they didn't do their jobs...