Posted on 09/16/2004 8:08:02 AM PDT by Happy2BMe
White House Says CBS Documents Part of DNC Plot
By Jeff Gannon
Talon News
September 16, 2004
WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Controversy continued to swirl around documents that CBS has used to further its story about gaps in President George W. Bush's National Guard service. On Wednesday, the White House said that while there are questions about the authenticity of the documents, there is no question about the timing of their appearance 50 days before the election.
The White House released the documents shortly after receiving them from CBS.
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan defended the move saying, "We received those documents from a major news organization. We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time."
He said that the documents were released in keeping with a policy of openness about the president's military service records. In February, over 400 pages were given to reporters when the issue of Bush's service in the Texas Air Guard was introduced to the 2004 campaign just as it was in 2000.
McClellan noted that since the documents were released there have been a number of questions that have been raised about their authenticity.
While he said the White House is not planning to investigate the documents itself, he added, "There continue to be questions raised. Those are serious issues; they ought to be looked into fully."
McClellan focused on the political impact of the documents.
"The one thing that is not under question is the timing of these orchestrated attacks by the Democrats on the President's service," McClellan said.
The press secretary continued, "These are old, recycled attacks, and the Democrats have made it clear that they intend to try to tear down the President and throw the kitchen sink at us because they can't run on John Kerry's record, and because they see him falling behind in the polls."
He supported that claim by citing that on Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee launched what it called "Operation Fortunate Son."
McClellan said, "Fortunate Son was the name of a book from the 2000 campaign that was written by a convicted felon who was widely discredited. And this whole effort is simply to attack the president."
He added, "Then you have this so-called group, Texans for Truth, which is lead by a Democrat operative in Texas who has the support of the MoveOn.org organization."
McClellan pointed out that Susan Estrich, a manager for Michael Dukakis' failed presidential campaign, wrote an op-ed in which she talked about how the Democrats are going to start engaging in personal attacks on the president's character.
The White House spokesman lamented, "The American people deserve better. It's just sad to see that they are lowering themselves to this level."
Talon News asked whether CBS's role in promoting forged documents jeopardized the presidential debate it is to moderate.
McClellan said, "In terms of the debates -- and I wouldn't connect the two here -- those are ongoing discussions between the two campaigns, and I don't have any update from here at this point."
I really shouldn't try to use big words like "stipuate"
What program converts PDF into HTML?
If for no other reason than to save Happy from having to defend that opening comment.
It sounds like he is mind-numbingly bitter, angry and hysterical. I know people like this, they're miserable.
We? Who is WE?
Talk about your data mining, you have an excellent post. Thanks for doing the research.
By adding (/sarcasm) to the sentence, your intention would have been clearer.
CBS is trying to defer the issue into one of "John Kerry the war hero ~vs~ George Bush the cocaine head rich kid who's daddy got him out of Nam through slick politics."
It's not working.
Wow, this is really aggressive for this campaign to use such direct language. I am shocked, and happy to see them be so concise. I think this story obviously was created by the DNC itself, and Rather's failure to disclose his source, if it were to have been credable, points to that.
Yes, Matt this guy is out for personal revenge for what he preceives to be an injustice done to him by W.
Yes, Matt this guy is out for personal revenge for what he perceives to be an injustice done to him by W.
The longer CBS sits on the pot waiting for this turd to explode the nastier it will be when the shi* finally does hit the fan.
In all of American history, I can't think of a comparable instance where a political party teamed up with a pliant, if not complicit, media to prepetrate a fraud of this magnitude to sway an election.
This will have aftershocks for years to come in both the news industry and for the Democratic Party.
Huh? That's not a smart statement to make. Anybody with a 3 digit IQ can see in a second that those documents are fakes. Why is the White House saying they looked at them and had every reason to believe they were authentic? Now CBS can say, "Hey, even the White House looked at them and thought they were authentic."
I believe the documents were to cover more than one angle. People, especially other media, was supposed to push the content so much that the questions remained when the fake documents were found out. The swift response on the forgeries threw this whole piece into jeapardy.
They wanted the questions to start distracting from 911.
They want to lay the seeds for a last minute, Bush is a crackhead smear.
When the forgeries were discovered, to use the excuse to discount some of the forthcoming documents about Kerry that they fear are coming.
I think they meant to start the doubts with these documents, and fuel it with the ad campaign and book. Then grow it from there.
All of this is consistent with other smears of the Clinton White House years. And if it blew up, Kerry takes the fall.
was = were ... sorry about that.
It has been pointed out that, first of all, orders for physicals do not come from Command, but the Medical Officer. Also, the memos are dated too early...physicals would be scheduled based on GWB's birthdate, which is in July. And then there is the pesky fact that Staudt retired well before any of the memos were supposedly written, so he could not have applied pressure. Combine that with the fact that everyone who knew Killian says they were not written by him nor expressed his thoughts on GWB and even CBS's own experts and witnesses are backpedaling bigtime, you have evidence for forgery that is beyond doubt, even without discussing fonts.
I agree. That is what I have been reading. This whole thing was and is a set up to try and pull another "DUI."
It all fits together. Rather's statment to Laura Bush during the convention, Susan Estrich's comment, Even Ellenor Clifts post on MSNBC a while back. They knew this was coming and have been plotting.
Guess what, it looks like it backfired on them.
Lets keep up the work and see if we can expose this as what it was - media collusion to take a sitting president down based on forged information. Then, my friends, the revolution will really have occurred.
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