September 20, 2004

60 MINUTES’ Own Excuse Exposes Their Unreliable Behavior in Using the Forged Memos

So 60 MINUTES’ excuse for using forged memos is that Burkett told them he’d gotten them from “another former Guardsman:”

In the statement, CBS said: “Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point.”

And that unsupported, unverified statement by Burkett was enough for CBS to go on? From Burkett, who had published something as hostile, and paranoid, as this:

In January of 1998 and what seems like a full lifetime ago, I was stricken by a deadly case of meningoencephalitis. I was returning from a short duty trip to Panama as a team chief to inspect the hand over of Ft. Clayton to the Panamanians. I had been ‘loaned’ from the senior staff and state planning officer of the Texas National Guard to the Department of the Army for a series of these special projects after angering George W. Bush by refusing to falsify readiness information and reports; confronting a fraudulent funding scheme which kept ‘ghost’ soldiers on the books for additional funding, and refusing to alter official personnel records [of George W. Bush].

George W. Bush and his lieutenants were mad. They ordered that I not be accessed to emergency medical care services, healthcare benefits I earned by my official duty; and I was withheld from medical care for 154 days before I was withdrawn from Texas responsibility by the Department of the Army, by order of the White House.

I was a pawn then caught in a struggle for right and wrong, but also caught within a political struggle between a man who would do anything to be ‘king’ of America and an institution of laws that we knew as America.

This is no excuse. The excuse itself exposes just how unreliable they were. It exposes the unacceptably low standards of evidence used by 60 MINUTES to endorse these documents for the purpose of influencing a Presidential election during wartime.

“Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting,” Heyward continued. “We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust.”

They broke that faith by taking Burkett’s unverified, unsupported word as sufficient evidence to promote these forgeries to the nation.

“I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers,” [Rather] said.

“We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry,” Rather added.

And what was the sophisticated scheme that misled Rather? Apparently nothing more than a lone unproven statement from a wildly partisan activist. That was all it took—if 60 MINUTES’ excuse is really the whole story.

Is this what they were stonewalling us on? To avoid exposing how they made no effort at all to verify the memos?

Or are they still hiding something more?

When Talking to Liberals About Iraq (How the War in Iraq Makes Us Safer)

I was at the local Apple store the other day and got into a conversation with a fellow-customer, who actually asked me if I didn’t believe that Bush got us into the Iraq war just for the benefit of companies like Haliburton. This was a reasonable, smart, well-educated guy. And he was buying into this conspiracy theory of Michael Moore’s. I was surprised that anybody had fallen for it.

I said I did not believe that, and ran down a list of the top reasons the war in Iraq is a good thing with regard to the war on terrorists.

• Hussein gave thousands of dollars to the families of suicide bombers who went to Iraq and killed Israeli and American civilians. From Associated Press, via LGF:

  GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Saddam Hussein has distributed $260,000 to 26 families of Palestinians killed in 29 months of fighting with Israel, including a $10,000 check to the family of a Hamas suicide bomber.

  In a packed banquet hall on Wednesday, the families came one-by-one to receive $10,000 checks. A large banner said: “The Arab Baath Party Welcomes the Families of the Martyrs for the Distribution of Blessings of Saddam Hussein.”

  From Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

  Israel Radio, quoting a Palestinian Authority report, said Monday that some $500,000 in funds provided by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would be distributed this week to families of Palestinians killed in the territories, including $25,000 each to families of three suicide bombers.

  The radio cited a report in the PA-affiliated Al-Ayyam newspaper, according to which the families of Palestinians killed in the violence – who were not suicide terrorists – would receive $10,000 each.

  The funds would be distributed by the Arab Liberation Front organization, the radio said.

• Hussein had a long history of supporting terrorism.

  CIA Analysis, January 2003: Iraqi Support for Terrorism,* (p. 314 of Senate Intel Report):
  “Iraq has a long history of supporting terrorism.”

  CIA Analysis, January 2003—Iraqi Support for Terrorism, (p. 314 of Senate Intel Report):
  “Iraq continues to be a safehaven, transit point, or operational node for groups and individuals who direct violence against the United States, Israel and other allies.”

  Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report (p. 315):
  “The CIA provided 78 reports, from multiple sources, [redacted] documenting instances in which the Iraqi regime either trained operatives for attacks or dispatched them to carry out attacks.”

  Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report (p. 316):
  “Iraq continued to participate in terrorist attacks throughout the 1990s.”

  Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report (p. 316):
  “From 1996 to 2003, the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] focused its terrorist activities on western interests, particularly against the U.S. and Israel.”

  Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report (p. 316):
  “Throughout 2002, the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] was becoming increasingly aggressive in planning attacks against U.S. interests. The CIA provided eight reports to support this assessment.”
  

• Other dictators who support terrorism know that if anything like 9-11 happens again and they are involved, we are likely to own their country in about three weeks. This restrains their support of terrorists.
• Fearing he was next after Hussein, Qaddafi voluntarily handed over his WMDs to the U.S. This is plenty of WMDs found in the Mideast as a result of the war in Iraq.
• The terrorists are tied up attacking our army there, rather than our civilians here.

After I responded he was open-minded enough to say that I might be right.

Update 9-25-04. See part 2 of this article here.