For the FSP Flat Earth Society/(aka Lefty nutjob meltdown)

Quit confusing the animals with facts DeSpurado. Some of these people act like it was W's call to make as to whether he wanted to return to the guard or not after he accumulated the bear minimum (if that!) amount of points necessary to make his 1972 agreement with his country. That's not the way it works, and especially not after your flight status has been revoked because you squealed out of a mandatory physical.

In other news, the former Secretary for Killian says that the CBS documents aren't anything she ever typed, but they were replicas of actual documents that once existed, and the information they contained was accurate.

Quote:

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HOUSTON – The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard colonel who supposedly authored memos critical of President Bush’s Guard service said Tuesday that the documents are fake, but that they reflect real documents that once existed.
...
“These are not real,” she told The Dallas Morning News after examining copies of the disputed memos for the first time. “They’re not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him.”

Mrs. Knox, 86, who spoke with precise recollection about dates, people and events, said she is not a supporter of Mr. Bush, who she deemed “unfit for office” and “selected, not elected.”

“I remember very vividly when Bush was there and all the yak-yak that was going on about it,” she said.
...
She said she did not recall typing the memos reported by CBS News, though she said they accurately reflect the viewpoints of Lt. Col. Killian and documents that would have been in the personal file. Also, she could not say whether the CBS documents corresponded memo for memo with that file.

“The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones,” she said.

---

Dallas News

http://images.mysanantonio.com/opini...91504nacho.jpg

Damn. Maybe CBS should be required to seek 527 status.


abcnews.go.com/sections/W...914-1.html

Casting Further Doubt
Document Analysts: CBS News Ignored Concerns About Disputed Bush Military Records

By Brian Ross
http://a.abcnews.com/images/abcnewscom_83x20.gif

Sept. 14, 2004 — Two of the document experts hired by CBS News say the network ignored concerns they raised prior to the broadcast of a report citing documents that questioned George W. Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War.

The authenticity of the documents in the report by CBS News' 60 Minutes II has been widely questioned. The documents were allegedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.

Emily Will, a veteran document examiner from North Carolina, told ABC News she saw problems right away with the one document CBS hired her to check the weekend before the broadcast.

"I found five significant differences in the questioned handwriting, and I found problems with the printing itself as to whether it could have been produced by a typewriter," she said.

Will says she sent the CBS producer an e-mail message about her concerns and strongly urged the network the night before the broadcast not to use the documents.

"I told them that all the questions I was asking them on Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran that story," Will said.

But the documents became a key part of the 60 Minutes II broadcast questioning President Bush's National Guard service in 1972. CBS made no mention that any expert disputed the authenticity.

"I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Will told ABC News.

‘I Did Not Authenticate Anything’

A second document examiner hired by CBS News, Linda James of Plano, Texas, also told ABC News she had concerns about the documents and could not authenticate them. She said she expressed her concerns to CBS before the 60 Minutes II broadcast.

"I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it to be misunderstood that I did," James said. "And that's why I have come forth to talk about it because I don't want anybody to think I did authenticate these documents."

A third examiner hired by CBS for its story, Marcel Matley, appeared on CBS Evening News last Friday and was described as saying the document was real.

According to The Washington Post, Matley said he examined only the signature attributed to Killian and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.

At the heart of the dispute is whether any typewriter existed in 1972 that could have produced the documents, with their distinct type style, even spacing, and the tiny raised "th" known as superscript.

Two experts told ABC News today there was no such machine, not even the IBM Selectric Composer, the most advanced typewriter available in 1972.

"This machine is not the culprit for these documents," said software engineer Gerry Kaplan.

Other new questions were raised today by National Guard officials who told ABC News that some of the language and abbreviations in the documents were not in use at the time.

CBS Stands by Its Report

CBS News says it still believes the documents are authentic.

"CBS News did not rely on either Emily Will or Linda James for a final assessment of the documents regarding George Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Ms. Will and Ms. James were among a group of experts we consulted to assess one of the four documents used in the report and they did not render definitive judgment on that document. Ultimately, they played a peripheral role and deferred to another expert who examined all four of the documents used," the network said in a statement.

"Most importantly, the content of the documents was backed up by our reporting and our sources who knew the thoughts and behavior of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian at the time," the statement said.

Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, told ABC News she believes the documents are fake, but that they do reflect some of what her former boss thought of then-Lt. George W. Bush.

"He did have complaints about Bush. Bush missed his physical and went off to Alabama with none of the paperwork, I remember Killian talking about that," Knox said. "But it wasn't in memo file."

But I thought that CBS was matching its critics 'expert for expert'? Like most things I read from the left wing nutters in this forum, that turned out not to be true.


www.washingtonpost.com/wp...Sep14.html

Document Experts Say CBS Ignored Memo 'Red Flags'

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 15, 2004; Page A10

Two document experts retained by CBS News for the disputed "60 Minutes" story on President Bush's National Guard record said yesterday they had warned the program that the memos involved had significant problems but that their concerns were not heeded.

"What I was finding was a lot of red flags," Emily Will told The Washington Post last night. She said she listed five concerns in an e-mail three days before last Wednesday's broadcast and that in a call to a producer the day before the program, "I repeated all my objections as strongly as I could." Will said she told the producer: "If you air the program on Wednesday, on Thursday you're going to have hundreds of document examiners raising the same questions."

In a separate telephone interview, Linda James said that she told CBS the documents "had problems" and that she had questioned "whether they were produced on a computer."

Asked whether CBS took her concerns seriously, James said: "Evidently not."

The concerns of both women were first reported by ABC News correspondent Brian Ross. A third document consultant, Marcel Matley, told The Post on Monday that although he vouched for the signature of Bush's former squadron commander, the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, there was "no way" he could authenticate Killian's purported memos because they were copies.

CBS continued to strongly defend the authenticity of the memos, which it used as evidence that Bush received favorable treatment while he was in the Texas Air National Guard.

CBS News Senior Vice President Betsy West said last night: "As far as I know, Linda James raised no objections. She said she'd have to see more documents to render a judgment."

As for Will's account, West said: "I'm not aware of any substantive objection she raised. Emily Will did not urge us to hold the story. She was not adamant in any way. At one point she raised a concern about a superscript 'th,' which we then discussed with the other experts we hired to examine all four of the documents we aired. We were assured the 'th' was consistent with technology at the time, an assessment that has since been backed up by other experts."

CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius added that both women "played a peripheral role and deferred to another expert," Matley. But James said she did not defer to Matley and merely recommended him to CBS. The network says it relied on two additional document experts, whose names have not been made public.

In another development last night, Killian's former secretary told the Dallas Morning News that she believes the documents are fake but that they reflect authentic memos that once existed.

"These are not real," Marian Carr Knox told the paper after examining copies of the disputed memos. "They're not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him."

Knox, 86, who acknowledged she was not a supporter of the president -- calling him "unfit for office" and "selected, not elected" -- said the typeface on the documents did not match either of the two typewriters that she used during her time at the guard, a mechanical Olympia and later an IBM Selectric. But she said the contents reflected the views of her boss, who, she said, kept a personal "cover his back" file in a locked desk drawer.

Knox's recollections suggest that CBS may have been duped about the documents even if the substance of its story was accurate.

The new accounts add to mounting questions about whether the 1972 and 1973 memos obtained by CBS were bogus. This is the first time that people involved in the process have said that they raised warning flags about the memos, whose authenticity has been doubted by the president's wife, Laura, and some outside document experts.

CBS News President Andrew Heyward and anchor Dan Rather have defended the story, saying the program relied not only on document analysis but also on interviews with people who worked with Killian at the time.

Will said she examined two disputed Killian memos, one of which was not used on the broadcast. She said she saw discrepancies in Killian's signature from an undisputed military document bearing his handwriting. Will said she also questioned whether an early 1970s typewriter could have produced the superscript, such as a raised "th," on the memos, and noted differences in the letterhead, the salutation and the way the date was rendered.

All these discrepancies "looked like trouble to me," Will said, adding that she told CBS this "in a resounding way."

James said she examined two disputed Killian memos and found "they were structurally different" from a Killian document released by the Pentagon. James said she questioned differences in the signing of the "J" of Killian's first name, to the point of wondering whether the lieutenant colonel had health issues that would have affected his writing. She said she also told CBS that she questioned whether the superscript could have been produced on a Vietnam War-era typewriter.

Given these concerns, James said, she was surprised that "60 Minutes" went ahead with the story. Both women disputed the contention by CBS that they had deferred to the judgment of other document experts, though both said they could not be 100 percent certain about their findings and had recommended other analysts.

Asked about Will's written concerns, CBS's West said: "The only e-mail we received raised some preliminary points about the handwriting, which [CBS's] other experts addressed and ruled out."

CBS began to doubt Will because she started expanding her role and doing Google searches about Bush's whereabouts at the time, said an executive who insisted on anonymity because the network did not want to go beyond the official statements. But Will said she was merely doing research into whether superscript existed in 1972.

I think it's quaint that the looney left and Dan Rather are reduced to relying on the memory of an 86 year old woman as their defense.

So basically CBS hits the president with a story based on widely regarded faked documents and the words of a Kerry supporter who has changed his story. Great. CBS continues to insist they are true despite the fact that the very experts they consulted to look at the documents raised serious objections to their authenticity. They also engaged in what appears to have been expert shopping.

Lest we forget that Rather has a history of general hostility to the Republican party and geniality to the Democrats.

Originally the image of CBS/Rather was one of being hoaxed. Now it looks like something a bit more than that.

Again, the source of these docs is most likely Burkett. At this point, CBS will probably try to stonewall themselves out of this mess. But if you have Kurtz critiquing their reporting in such a manner as well as other major media outlets investigating this then at some point CBS is going to have to come clean in order to save whatever shreds of credibility they may have left.

But I know, CBS isn't 'Faux News'. It's "mainstream." It's "objective." Yeah fucking right you morons.

CBS and Dan Rather appear to have screwed up royally and Rather's reputation is toast.

Mistakes happen in journalism, there probably isn't a network or paper in the country that hasn't had to correct a story.

But this was just a bad call, period.

But don't go blaming the "lefties" or calling people morons for what CBS did. I had NOTHING to do with their report at all.

Joe...."I had NOTHING to do with their report at all." .......No, you didn't Joe but your party did!:wink

I wouldn't be so sure this was a simple journalistic error. CBS/Rather knew in advance there were significant problems with the documents. You can look at the timing of the 60 Minutes II report, the fact that they interviewed Killian's son and wife who said they disagreed with the docs but did not air that. The fact that they based their claims of privilege for Bush in getting into the Guard on an interview with Ben Barnes, a significant Kerry fundraiser who had changed his story on the matter. That they didn't point out that there were some questions with the documents nor give at least some indication from where the documents came. The original report was very one-sided. CBS' subsequent attempts to defend its reporting were as well, with Rather using Jim Moore. And so on.

You can also notice the DNC's "fortunate son" campaign came out rather quickly (hell, the 'Texans for Truth' showed up last week right after that report, if I am not mistaken) and the fact that the Boston Globe as well as the NY Times were in on the original report.

This looks less and less like a simple journalistic error and like something much more devious.

Rather's history of animus to the GOP and to Bush's father as well as his general fawning over the Demos (as well as fundraising for them) is no secret.

And no, you can't hang this on Rove. CBS had plenty of warning about the docs and ample opportunity to engage in some critical investigation but apparently slamming the president was much more important.

Now it looks like CBS will pay, at least in a major dent to their reputation and Rather will be leaving the "profession" with a major black mark on his career.

Quote:

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Joe Chalupa:

"But don't go blaming the "lefties" or calling people morons for what CBS did. I had NOTHING to do with their report at a

---

Joe, that all depends on the origin of the Documents and why Dan Rather is so reticent to reveal a source that duped him.

Ask any journalist what he'd do if an anonymous source provided him with blatantly false information. Well, if that journalist isn't Dan Rather, they'd tell you the person's name would be in the lead paragraph of a retraction and apology.

Also, if the source of these docs is Burkett well the motives of that individual are highly suspect.

This was more than a simple error. The sad thing for CBS is that all they would have had to do is admit that they made an error and most of this would have blown over. The more they stonewall at this point and insist the documents are authentic the greater harm that CBS is inviting upon itself.

This was not the first time that 60 Minutes aired a report based on fake docs though. Something for which CBS had to give an on-air apology, if not more.

Dan Rather should go cover hurricane Ivan at ground zero. He would probably get that wrong also. At least he might be able to outblow Ivan.:lol

Oh yeah, this guy is supposed to moderate one of the presidential debates. I think that should be reconsidered.


www.siouxcityjournal.com/...1702ba.txt

Schieffer: CBS needs to prove memos on Bush were authentic

By Dave Dreeszen
Sioux City Journal

CBS News' Bob Schieffer said Tuesday he hopes the network does more reporting to definitively prove the authenticity of memos 60 Minutes II received about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard.

"I think we have to find some way to show our viewers they are not forgeries,'' Schieffer, CBS' chief Washington correspondent and host of the network's "Face the Nation,'' said at a news conference in Sioux City. "I don't know how we're going to do that without violating the confidentiality of sources.''

Schieffer was responding to a 60 Minutes II report last week that referenced memos allegedly written by Bush's former squadron commander, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. The typed memos were part of anchor Dan Rather's investigation that asserted Bush benefited from political favoritism in getting into the Air National Guard.

But there has been growing evidence that the documents are forgeries, with national news organizations citing dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from different word-processing techniques to conflicting military terminology.

CBS has stood by its story, with Rather saying there is "no definitive evidence'' that has emeged to prove the documents are fake.

"He is very confident of his sources,'' said Schieffer, who has talked to Rather daily during the flap. "He says he is absolutely convinced these documents are real.''

CBS, which has declined to reveal the source of the memos, has pointed to its own experts who have verified that documents could have been produced on typewriters of the 1970s. But the Washington Post reported Tuesday that the lead expert CBS retained said he examined only Killian's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.

Casting further doubt on the documents, the Dallas Morning News reported Saturday that the officer named in a memo as exerting pressure to "sugar coat'' Bush's record had retired from the Texas Air National Guard 1.5 years before the memo was dated. Killian's widow and son also have told reporters that they doubt he wrote the memos, they did not come from his personal possessions and that he admired Bush while in served in the Air National Guard.

Though Schieffer discounted suggestions that Rather received fraudulent documents, he acknowledged the source could have been a Bush opponent.

"People ask me, 'Do I think somebody was trying to set up Dan Rather?' I say, "No that's completely out of the question,'' said Schieffer, who addressed the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce's annual dinner/meeting Tuesday night. "Would somebody do this in an effort to smear George Bush? That may be so. We're in the middle of a political campaign, and this would not be the first campaign where somebody on one side slipped something to a reporter because he feels it would hurt the guy on the other side.''


Dave Dreeszen can be reached at (712) 293-4211 or [email protected]

Memo to Dan Rather from CBS:

"That's it you're gone!!"

"Kenneth! What's the frequency?"

National Review: The First Rathergate

Did someone say "early retirement"?

And that's the way the story goes.

We're gonna find out how much Dan Rather loves the Democratic party.

Because he's either gonna have to admit the Kerry campaign passed him the memo, effectively ending Johnboy's campaign, or he's gonna have to fall on the sword and take the hit to his ego/rep.

http://www.thestate.com/multimedia/t...s/ariaillg.gif

:lol

Republican't keep disputing the legitimacy of the documents because they can't argue the content - its all true.

Man, that's classic!

You're right. It's Rather hard to beat the "fake but accurate" nature of the documents.

Unlike the Swift Boat liars who were 'real but inaccurate'?

So the documents are authentic?

You know danny, I couldn't have asked for a better representative of the title of this thread and trust me, you've had some Rather stiff competition.

You're talking to the wrong man about the Swift Vets.

But you do raise an interesting observation: The Swift Vets had to organize themselves as a 527.

When can we expect CBS to do the same?

Quote:

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So the documents are authentic?

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I've told you before, no one is ever gonna prove that legally. It's all speculation and the same old switch of hand that Repugs always do. It's also why we can't talk real issues in this campaign.