I have an easier time believing the WWN.
Posted on 10/01/2004 6:35:38 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
The credibility of CBS News is taking another hit after the network aired a story based on Internet e-mails that turn out to be urban legend.
In an election feature story Tuesday, CBS News Correspondent Richard Schlesinger presented a Philadelphia woman, Beverly Cocco, who feared her two sons could be called for military service because the Bush administration is plotting to reinstitute a military draft.
"It's no secret, the all-volunteer U.S. military, especially the Army, Marines, and many Reserve units, are stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan," intoned CBS News anchor Dan Rather in the introduction to Schlesinger's piece. "So what about bringing back the draft? A lot of Americans are worried about that. Where do the presidential candidates stand?"
To back up his story, Schlesinger cited e-mails bouncing around the Internet.
"There's an undercurrent of anxiety; mass e-mails are circulating among parents worried their kids could be called up."
Cocco is among the anxious.
"I go to bed every night, and I pray, and I actually get sick to my stomach," she said on camera. "I'm very worried; I'm scared. I'm absolutely scared; I'm petrified."
Schlessinger then talked to her sons.
"Are you guys worried about being drafted?" he asked.
Both nodded, and son Nick responded.
"Yeah. It's the talk. The talk's there. Though people aren't actually coming out and saying it, it's, it's there."
But the Urban Legends watchdog Snopes.com shows the e-mails are false, noting draft bills in Congress – which have not moved past the committee level – were "introduced not by legislators genuinely seeking to reinstate the draft, but by Democrats seeking to make an anti-war statement."
The CBS report did not mention the bills introduced by Democrats Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina and Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York.
As WorldNetDaily reported, the reputation of CBS News and Rather were severely damaged by the revelation that a "60 Minutes II" report used forged documents to raise questions about President Bush's National Guard service.
One of the bogus e-mails to which CBS referred in its Tuesday report reads:
There is pending legislation in the House and Senate (twin bills: S 89 and HR 163) which will time the program's initiation so the draft can begin at early as Spring 2005 – just after the 2004 presidential election. The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections, so our action on this is needed immediately. Details and links follow.
The website RatherBiased.com points out CBS described Beverly Cocco as a Republican who also is a "single-issue voter," failing to mention that she is chapter president of a group called People Against the Draft.
RatherBiased.com says that after it debunked the story, the CBS News website quietly changed the online article, adding Cocco's affiliation.
People Against the Draft portrays itself as "nonpartisan," RatherBiased.com notes, but its leadership appears to have no Republicans.
The group's domain is registered to Jacob Levich, a left-wing activist who in a 2001 essay compared the Bush administration to the totalitarian regime portrayed in George Orwell's "1984."
I have an easier time believing the WWN.
Anyone like to hazard a guess as to WHY they wrote and sponsored these bills? I'll give you two guesses and the first one doesn't count.
"Take her back, you green-blooded toads!" *POW!*
"A deal is a deal, filthy HUUU-man!" *SMACK!*
Damn, they could't even find one RINO stupid enough to go along with them! That HAS to be a first!
*BUMP*! Last week I noticed a woman in the check out line of local Safeway. She actually was buying a Weekly World News! This was the first time in my life I had actually seen someone buying a copy of this rag. I leaned over and asked her if she had seen the famous WW with a cover photo of Bill Clinton kissing the alien woman. She laughed and told me she reads WW for its inventive humor and generally avoids all television news shows and newspapers. She will probably live longer that either of us!
Boortz just now talked about this but, same as Rush, he didn't mention how they changed the transcript afterward.
On another thread about this, it was reported that, when confronted with the fact that the reports of a new draft by the Bush administration had been debunked, SeeBS reporter Schlessinger merely shrugged his shoulders and replied that that wasn't important.
What this means is that SeeBS should stop calling it news and should call it's evening broadcasts with Dan "the Fraud" Blather something more relevant like 'Rumors' or 'Stuff to Talk About While You Eat Dinner'.
I saw the segment, and it was phony.
The Democrats have been pushing for a draft since the war started, and it has been the most anti-war Dems who were pushing for it.
This is their attempt to innoculate themselves for their anti-war stance by appearing to support a strong military, but more importantly this represents their frustration with their inability to arouse a real anti-war movement. They know that the motor driving the movement in the sixties was the draft itself. Bring back the draft, and the glory days of the sixties antiwar radicalism will be back with it.
So its a poison pill. There are probably good reasons to consider a draft, but if its proponents are anti-war activists, you have to smell a rat. A war-fighting military has to be built on people who are willing to fight. Except in a very different moral climate than this one, that argues against the draft. The army of the Second World War could be built upon a draft because the country's elites were on board and were able to rally the people. At present the elites are not on board, and will use the draft as a wedge to destroy the war effort.
it is easy to FORGE an email FROM anyone TO anyone
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