Most people know about the famous 60 Minutes exposee of George W Bush’s conduct as an Air Force Reservist during the Vietnam era, but the key dispute in the story - the “forged” letter, has all kinds of mystery to it. Some people belive that Rather and CBS forged the letter themselves, while other note the incredible speed in which previously unknown bloggers “debunked” the story - I think I heard that stories were out analysing the documents within an hour of the story airing, suggesting that the forged documents were planted.
This story was huge, but it seems to have dropped off the radar without any of it being settled. I’ve heard that to this day the letter(s) still haven’t been shown conclusively to be fake.
What’s the Straight Dope here? Was it a hachet job by CBS or did Karl Rove mastermind a huge sting? Was it really some anonymous guy with knowledge of typewriter fonts from the early 70’s who just happened to have a blog and just happened to watch 60 minutes that night?
Yes, it was pretyt much resolved. There were way too many patently impossible features on those “reports” for them to be true. Likewise, the bloggers were previously “unknown” only to the people who didn’t read their blogs, duh. And when they had something important to say, the blog-o-sphere did what it does best - spread the word.
The idea that isolated bloggers working indepentaly and sharing expertise would somehow be slower than a huge Karl Rove plot is so patently stupid it makes my eyebrows twitch.
Dan Rather & co. were never, to my knowledge, even remotely likely suspects. Some poined fingers int he direction of a Texas Democrat, which would about par for the course for Texas politicians, but it’s never been conclusively proven and cannot be. We know they are fakes, not who made them. Rather and his producer simply didn’t investigate properly, presumably because he wanted them to be real, and that was a huge enough problem for them.
Yeah their hatred for GWB was/is so great that they exposed themselves as the false journalists they were and will always be remembered as. They and Jayson Blair can at least all cry into their beers together.
Well, not perzackly. The allegations contained in the documents are verified, the documents themselves were questionable. If the wild inventions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were factual, it would still be a forgery.
But it would be churlish to deny you guys your tiny moment of vindication, you’ve had so few lately.
The most interesting thing about this is that from a few fuzzy screenshots of this they were able to demonstrate conclusively that it was a forgery in less than a week, yet with the physical yellowcake memo in their actual hands for months, not so much. Go figure.
Information accurate, but made to look official. It’s really too bad nobody has ever bothered to explain this before in any of the threads this has been brought up in before.
But let’s be clear about how the information was determined to be accurate. A secretary who would’ve typed the original memo says she thought it was accurate, but it would’ve been 30 years since it was written and she was 86 years old when the story broke. It’s certainly possible that an 86 year old woman could remember a document that she typed 30 years ago, but I wouldn’t call that a slam dunk.
As for where the memos came from, they were given to CBS by Bill Burkett. Wikipedia has a good article on this: Killian documents
Not exactly. The story about Bush’s AWOL/desertion was well-established, via a number of other sources, before this document ever appeared. The problem is that the Bush diehards have used this forgery as proof, in their minds, that all the *rest * of the evidence was faked too.
As someone who has been in the National Guard for the last 15 years I can assure you that missing drills does not equal desertion. Or AWOL. Those are crimes that only apply if you are an active duty soldier.
No. You are very wrong. You don’t get leave if you are not on active duty. You can’t be absent without something you don’t get in the first place. You also don’t have to go to every drill within a year for it to still count as a good year. I missed three months in a row because I was in the police academy. I was not AWOL. I did not desert. I still got credited for a good year towards retirement. The guard works different than active duty. You don’t know what you are talking about. No big deal, why should you unless you are in the national guard.
ETA: I will say again and for the last time, AWOL and desertion are crimes punishable under the UCMJ. They are very specific legal terms. For the most part Guardsmen that are not under orders for active duty do not fall under the UCMJ. Weekend drills do not count as active duty. They are labeled as IDT, Inactive Duty Training. Thats it. I’m done.