Posted on 09/12/2004 2:43:11 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
These days, CBS News anchor Dan Rather and his colleagues at the network's magazine program "60 Minutes II" are enduring an unusual wave of second-guessing by some of the public and fellow journalists.
For that, they can thank "Buckhead."
It was a late-night blog posting by this mystery Netizen that first questioned the validity of documents Rather cited Wednesday as proof that George W. Bush did not fulfill his National Guard duty more than 30 years ago.
Buckhead refuses to further identify himself, other than dropping hints that he is a male who lives on the East Coast — preferring to proclaim that the scramble to verify the contentions in his posting marks an extraordinary achievement for a medium that has operated more as an underground world of ideological venting than a source of legitimate news.
But Buckhead is vehement about one thing: He acted alone when he posted, to the conservative website FreeRepublic.com, what was widely believed to be the first allegation that the CBS report relied on documents that could have been forged.
"Absolutely, positively, on my own, sitting at my computer in my bedroom just before midnight — but not in my pajamas," he wrote in an e-mail exchange with The Times. "But once I posted the comment to Free Republic I was no longer working alone, and that is the real point of the story about the story about the story."
That story began Wednesday, 19 minutes after the "60 Minutes II" broadcast began, when another FreeRepublic poster, TankerKC, noted that the documents were "not in the style that we used when I came into the USAF…. Can we get a copy of those memos?"
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Congrats! I'd bake you a cake but I'm finishing up my Dan Rather dart board.
The way FR folks get together to attack a 'the strange odor of a news story' is really a phenomenon! Congrats again!
I haven't had the chance to mention to you that it didn't surprise me to see that you were mixed up in this. Way to go, Howlin! :)
Oh! Thanks.
Mixed up? LOL.......
And you should talk: two words: space shuttle.
Yeah, maybe a counter lawsuit is in order?
They will NEVER "get it". They think we are all a bunch of backward hicks that have no idea how to do anything. Just because they sit at the "mighty desk" and take telephone calls from "news sources" doesn't mean they have the market cornered on the truth. In fact, most of us are just as qualified as any of them to find the truth.
At least, we can tell if a document has been forged unlike many of them who have no experience in the military or know anything about how the military works. That's why so many people hate the MSM because they try to trash their readers by insinuating that we are too dumb to "understand".
They don't understand that we are sick of them!
If anything they should be mad at Al Gore for inventing the internet.
"It was amazing Thursday to watch the documents story go from FreeRepublic.com, a bastion of right-wing lunacy, to Drudge to the mainstream media in less than 12 hours," said Jim Jordan, a strategist for independent Democratic groups opposed to Bush.
"That's not to say the documents didn't deserve examination. But apparently the entire thing was cooked up by a couple of amateurs on Free Republic. The speed with which it moved was breathtaking."
Amateurs? That would be CBS!
Gee, I must have missed something. I thought all the people on right wing web sites are toothless trolls, Rush Limbaugh zombies, mindless idiots and drinkers of the koolaid from the vast right wing conspiracy.
The MSM have just smashed into some of the technology savvy people from the new media. They'll just have to sharpen their computer skills and get over it.
Absolute proof the documents are fraudulent:
http://img41.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img41&image=60minbusted.swf
"And that's the way it is." ~Uncle Walter
LOL ..
Way to go, Howlin! You're famous! Woohoooo! Fantastic job!
Actually, the question is whether Gunga Dan & friends deliberately tried to smear the president by passing out known fraudulent documents.
"It was amazing Thursday to watch the documents story go from FreeRepublic.com, a bastion of right-wing lunacy,
Right-wing lunatics. That would be us.
"The mainstream press is having to follow them," said Jeffrey Seglin, a professor at Emerson College in Boston. "The fear I have is: How do you know who's doing the Web logs?
How do we know who's teaching at Emerson College or writing political commentary at the Times?
There is so much information OUT THERE, I decided to put up the OFFICIAL version, rather than let bloggers misconstrue what actually happened.
I put this thread up for the 60 Minutes show.
Live Thread: Ben Barnes and CBS Attempt Another Bush Smear (60 Minutes) at 7:39:18 PM EDT.
At 8:19:00 PM EDT TankerKC posted this:
They are not in the style that we used when I came in to the USAF. They looked like the style and format we started using about 12 years ago (1992). Our signature blocks were left justified, now they are rigth of center...like the ones they just showed.
Can we get a copy of those memos?
Can some of you guys in the later time zones WATCH this interview and get a GOOD LOOK at those docuemtns.....how they were typed, where the signature was.....that kind of thing?
A screen grab would be great!
Who else does screen captures?
That thread continued along for a bit with people commenting on the documents and the show.
Then CBS put the documents up on their web site:
HERE THEY ARE:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/08/60II/main641984.shtml
Scroll down on the left!!!!!!
Then Pikamax put up this thread:
Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard
To which Buckhead posted the shot heard round the world:
Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.
In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.
The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.
I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.
This should be pursued aggressively.
After all the questions that arose from everybody on the forum, I put this thread up:
THE "New" CBS BUSH DOCUMENTS: Let's do some investigating
As Buckhead said on another thread, many, many Freepers were involved.
Not me; my name got left out of this one, thank goodness. I do NOT need anymore email!
LOL! There goes some coffee.
Insults, I tell you.
OPEN LETTER TO THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA: We are not amateurs and we are going to kick your butts.
Congratulations to all three of you! Headlines for FR, and mention of you three individually - high fives all around! We've even merited name-calling by some Demogoon! Fantastic job!
Okay, now I'm officialy pi$$ed.
That's almost as bad as Rather saying we are partisan political operatives and the other CBS flunky adding "in pajamas."
Some in the MSM must cringe when they see that time-line.
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