Les Jones

Media Behaving Badly > C BS. C BS Run. Run, C BS, Run (Part 7)

Fake and inaccurate: Col. Walter Staudt has come forward. He says he never asked anyone to sugarcoat Bush's service, and didn't see anyone pulling strings to get Bush into the guard.

During his time in charge of the unit, Staudt decided whether to accept those who applied for pilot training. He recalled Bush as a standout candidate.

"He was highly qualified," he said. "He passed all the scrutiny and tests he was given."

Staudt said he never tried to influence Killian or other Guardsmen, and added that he never came under any pressure himself to accept Bush. "No one called me about taking George Bush into the Air National Guard," he said. "It was my decision. I swore him in. I never heard anything from anybody."

RatherBiased is collecting Dan Rather cartoons.

How much would an IBM Selectric Composer cost in the early 1970s? Answer: as much as a good car.

Junkyard Blog has more on document examiner James Pierce and retired guard secretary Marian Knox.

Here's a question for Knox:

Just spoke to another one of Dubya's squadron mates from the 111th. (I don't know how to do superscripts on e-mail). He passed on the Question of the Day for Mrs. Knox: You said that Mr. Bush got into the National Guard on the basis of preferential treatment "...because there were a lot of other boys in there the same way." Does that include your son, Ted, who joined the squadron in about 1972?

UPDATE A FEW HOURS LATER: Bush disputes content and authenticity of CBS memos. If anything, this is a sign that there's no doubt they're fakes, or the White House wouldn't stick its neck out. It goes along with this:

There is an adage in our business that a scoop that remains a scoop for more than 24 hours means trouble. If others don't pick up a big story, you probably got it wrong.

This is a bad scoop. Other news organizations are not picking up the story; they are picking it apart. CBS' own document analysts are all over other networks explaining how "60 Minutes II" ignored their doubts and warnings.

The LA Times Article on Buckhead

This LA Times story reports on Buckhead, the Free Republic poster who first noted problems with the CBS documents a few hours after the 60 Minutes II report aired two Wednesdays ago.

Tim Blair fisks the excessive references to Buckhead's political leanings ("Imagine; a Republican posting on a conservative website!"). Or as Patterico says, "Extra! Extra! Freeper Is Conservative! Read All About It!"

Now look at the rest of this reporting bombshell.

The memos showed Killian resisting pressure by a higher-up to "sugarcoat" Bush's performance evaluation and ordering Bush to take a physical examination so he could keep flying.

So is the LA Times saying the documents are real? That's funny. An editorial in Wednesday's LA Times said "CBS News was had. It's hard to reach any other conclusion about documents that CBS and anchor Dan Rather have defended as revealing the truth about George W. Bush's military service."

CBS has cited an expert, Bill Glennon, an information technology consultant, who said IBM electric typewriters that were in use in 1972 could provide proportional spacing and the superscript � the small "th" � evident in the disputed memos.

The network also has sought to counter the arguments by referring to a typewriting script distributor, who says the typing style in the memos has been available since 1931. Moreover, CBS points out, some of the lettering in question was evident in Bush's military records previously released by the White House.

I guess they are saying the documents are real. (BTW, RE: the superscript in the CBS docs and legitimate Bush docs, see this side-by-side comparison. They don't look remotely similar.)

Or are they really real?

Still, when Killian's former secretary came forward this week to say she did not believe the memos were authentic either, anchor Dan Rather and other network executives stopped asserting that the memos were real. They said they would "redouble" efforts to resolve unanswered questions.

The LA Times takes Knox's word that the documents are fake as gospel, because she has the two characteristics that prove trustworthiness: she's a Democrat, and she hates George Bush. So now that they have a known Democrat saying the documents are fake, they must really be fake.

Faking documents! Why, that sounds like something only an evil Republican would do:

While bloggers and some conservative activists hailed Buckhead as a hero in their longtime efforts to paint the mainstream media as politically biased, some Democrats and even some conservative bloggers have marveled at Buckhead's detailed knowledge of the memos and wondered whether that suggested a White House conspiracy.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe even speculated openly to reporters that the whole thing could have been orchestrated by White House political advisor Karl Rove. The Bush campaign called the allegation "nonsense."

So, to recap the story: either the phony documents are real and show that CHIMPBUSH=HITLER ONLY WORSER, or the genuine documents aren't real, in which case they're People's Exhibit A of an evil, right-wing, Republican, neo-conservative, 527, blogosphere, pajamanati conspiracy to make CBS look dumb. Either BUSH=AWOL or ROVE=MEAN. Take your pick, LA Times readers. Whatever you do, don't conclude RATHER=DUMB AND DISHONEST, even while the 60 Minutes staff is distancing itself from the 60 Minutes II staff.

Posted by lesjones