Posted on 09/13/2004 11:22:00 AM PDT by Happy2BMe
In regards to CBS and Dan Rather insisting on sticking by their story (a tall tale for sure), I offer the following which may be of interest to readers who are uncertain as to what to believe.
Additional strong factual indications that the Rather story is a sham, include the following:
• The Dallas Morning News reported Saturday that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt, named by CBS as the individual responsible for the memo exerting pressure to “sugar coat” President Bush’s military records, was honorably discharged from the Texas Air National Guard March 1, 1972; over a year before the “dastardly memo” was supposed to have been written (August 18, 1973). Staudt, of course, was one of Rather’s “unimpeachable sources”. Confronted with this information, a CBS staff member indicated that the Colonel still ‘could have exerted influence’.
NOTE: Give me and everyone else a break, staffer! Sounds like CBS is STILL doing anything it can, including desperately scrambling to try and make its fake story fit with the truth. It’s not working. P.S. to “staffer”: After retirement, there is no residual “influence” or power on remaining active Guard officials.
• Gary Killian (son of the now deceased Lt. Col. Killian who was President Bush’s C.O. in the National Guard) advised in several interviews that the purported documents (ostensibly prepared by his father) flew in the face of everything his father had said about President George W. Bush, his father did not type and that he would never have written a memo entitled “CYA”. Gary Killian continued by saying that one of the documents was signed with only his father’s first name; something Lt. Col. Killian had never done and would not do. He further advised Mary Mapes of CBS that any documents she had were probably bogus and that his father highly respected President Bush. He also gave her the names of individuals in the Guard who worked closely with [then] Lt. George W. Bush. When Ms. Mapes asked if they were pro or con Bush, Mr. Killian told her ‘pro’. With that, Ms. Mapes ended the conversation and did not contact Gary Killian again
• Rather said (in his Friday evening broadcast on CBS) that CBS expert Marcel Matley had authenticated all 4 documents. However, Mr. Matley advised that he only reviewed one. This is, yet, another of Rather’s “unimpeachable sources.”
• Ben Barnes, Dem operative and holder of the prestigious Dem title of “Trustee”, recently said that he ‘got Bush into the Guard’. However, four years ago in sworn testimony he said that he had not. Mr. Barnes daughter, on Sean Hannity’s Friday radio program, told Hannity that her father, also, told her that he had not.
There is even more evidence that these documents are forgeries, including (but not limited to) the peculiar P.O. Box address that appears at the top of, at least, one of the documents; the address and zip code would (apparently) not have been accurate for the National Guard base in the 1970s. I’m relatively certain that more substantiation of these counterfeit papers will be presented in the next few days. However, the ones cited above should certainly be enough for some independent body to begin a full-fledged investigation of the practices employed at CBS News.
Witnessing what has been and is being perpetrated against the public (by a once major network news organization) in the name of helping John Kerry is chilling. However, one thing remains certain. Fraud is not covered under the First Amendment.
I didn't make it, I found it somewhere and thought I'd save it for you!!
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