Letters to the Editor
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Phony National Guard Memos
I was surprised in 2004 (and continue to be) that no one has ever brought up the notion that perhaps the memos provided to CBS were SUPPOSED to be revealed as fake, therefore changing the story from Bush's National Guard absence to the validity of the memos themselves.
I know that sounds a little conspiracy theorist. But, doesn't it sound exactly like something Rove and company would do to throw the lazy mainstream media off the scent? After the CBS story, the memos became the focus, and the GW lack of service story fell by the wayside.
The memos were such obvious computer-created forgeries (the "th" at the end of the date being a dead giveaway) that it would seem someone trying to pass these off as genuine might take the time to use an actual typewriter.
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Joan, we were beginning to worry. You disappeared.
But you suddenly re-appeared on Dan Abrams' "hollywood squares" show again paired with Pat Buchanan last night.
And I must say, you and Pat kind of scared the crap out of me. Instead of the usual arguing back and forth, both of you joined together and seemed to be genuinely convinced that Bush and Cheney are going to initiate a military strike by aircraft and cruise missles against "2,400 targets" according to Buchanan.
While I'm sure there aren't that many camps, these are the encampments of Iranian infiltrators and smugglers who are crisscrossing the border with Iraq, delivering manufactured IEDs and other materials that insurgents use to kill Americans.
I don't doubt the veracity of those reports. Of course, what the administration leaves out is that these are not conventional military camps, they are little hamlets and villages with civilian populations. So any bombardment or air strike is bound to produce really horrific casualties among Iranian civilians.
The idea, according to Buchanan, but heard elsewhere, is for the United States to whack a bunch of camps along the border with stand-off weapons from the three carrier battle groups poised in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. When this happens, the "wisdom" goes, Iran will be forced to retaliate against the United States and Israel and then the whole region is in all-out war.
The United States will then get to use the tactical "bunker buster" nuclear weapons they have been designing and building, against underground plutonium enrichment facilities.
Of course, this is always where the Neo-Con planning stops. What happens next? High numbers of Iranian civilians dead, wounded and poisoned by radiation from our nukes.
Countries downwind of Iran, including parts of Pakistan and of course, India, are going to be breathing radioactive dust for years.
Also I believe you and Buchanan are in complete agreement about this: Bush doesn't "saber rattle." When he says he's going to attack, he attacks, and the hell with everybody in the world.
Speculation is that Bush must get into a war with Iran before he leaves office so that the next president will be forced to stay in that war, and also fight the two existing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Chilling
Dear Joan,
I just got off the phone with Schumer's and Clinton's offices to voice my dismay that both New York senators voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment. Like you, I am horrified at the prospect of another war.
It seems to me that the press was masterfully manipulated by those who would seek war with Iran -- and they allowed themselves to be so manipulated -- by the Iranian president's disastrous visit this week.
I call it disastrous because the visit became an occasion not to so much look at Iranian/US relations in the clear light of day, but to create a pretext for war. And by humiliating this head-of-state in front of Columbia's student body, I fear that the president of that institution may have backed the Iranian into a corner, so that he won't have room to maneuver towards diplomacy.
Of course, I must write the requisite: I don't like the Iranian president's antisemitism or his denial of the Holocaust. I come from a long line of conservative Jews. But isn't it strange that I must state this here, but don't have to if I speak of our friends in the middle east who have even more reprehensible governments and equally (if not more ) bigoted views.
Anyway, thank you for your blog. I always find your words useful, informative and intelligent.
One question: Has Salon considered a column on activism? I feel rather odd. We are headed to another war, but most of us (and here I think mostly of myself) seem to be doing nothing to actively stop it. You are, as are other writers. But me? Not much. I feel like a chicken with its head cut off. There doesn't seem to be much strong or unified leadership out there on this. I'd appreciate any discussion Salon could offer.
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Greg Palast anyone?
Where are interviews with Greg Palast, who first broke this story on BBC? He has documents and interviews that fully expose the story, but was denied publication in the U.S. He also has an interview with Dan Rather in which Rather admitted to Neck-lacing of the MSM, again, not for U.S. consumption. We are so ignorant of what is going on elsewhere in the world.
peace,
st john
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Re: The Memos
I think Rove & Co. knew the memos shown in Mr. Rather's piece were re-created/fake, because they had the original ones on file & thus could compare & contrast the minor formatting differences.
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Bush ratf***king?
I was in an investigative journalism class that began looking into Bush's work on that 72 Senate campaign in Alabama. There were suggestions that he, like Rove, Segretti, and other young Repub ratf**kers of that time, was engaging in dirty tricks. Unfortunately many of the principals are dead and others won't talk about it.
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Ratfarkers? Ratflickers? Ratflunkers?
I'll be fucked if I can tell what you're trying to say.
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What do you mean, "no one has ever"?
Pete H writes that he was surprised that "no one has ever brought up the notion that perhaps the memos provided to CBS were SUPPOSED to be revealed as fake".
Sure they did. There was intense speculation online in 2004, fueled in part by the wave of rightwing bloggers who had suddenly become typographers, experts in 1970s type fonts and typewriters, who had IMMEDIATE analyses and rejection as fakes of the CBS memos, in gory technical detail, within a day of the 60 Minutes broadcast.
Then more experts weighed in, and within a disturbingly short period of time, CBS threw in the towel.
In fact, a lot of the wingnut bloggers were just plain WRONG about the capabilities of 1970s IBM Selectrics. But wasn't it surprising, the progressive bloggers noted, how fast out of the gate they had been? How they all sang the same tune? And yes, there was speculation that the memos themselves had been a set up.
Liberal blogs traced the origin of the memos, and learned that the source had been forced to admit that he had gotten them extremely recently, by an anonymous source, under conditions that didn't bear scrutiny. His story held up - but those memos had been planted.
It looked like a Rove dirty trick then. It still does. Will the mainstream, so-called liberal media cover it?
Apparently, not -- even if Dan Rather sues for $70,000,000.00.