Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Captain Dan speaks from Mount Olympus - guest post
The following is a guest post by Mr. Bluemerle;
He was giving me a running commentary on the Observer interview linked above , and I thought He was giving Captain Queeg the what-for. Therefore I left him with the keys to the kingdom while I went to slam my fingers in doors ( don't ask.)
Oh. My. God. Where to start?
Mr. Rather said that he and his longtime CBS producer, Mary Mapes, had investigated the story for nearly five years, finally convincing a source to give them the National Guard documents. He did not reveal the name of the source, but Mr. Rather said he was a man who had been reluctant to come forth with them because he’d been harassed by political operatives. "Whether one believes it or not, this person believed that he and his family had been harassed and even threatened," he said. "We were not able to confirm that, but his fear was that what had already been threats, intimidation, if he gave up the documents, could get worse—maybe a lot worse."
[Yeah, their source is a paranoid/schizophrenic with delusions of “threats” and “harassment” that CBS can’t validate, but they remain convinced that his documents are still good.]
Mr. Rather said that it would require an exceptional amount of knowledge to craft a forgery—and not just the typographical kind. "You’d have to have an in-depth knowledge of Air Force manuals from 1971,"
[Ha! As has been exhaustively documented, the referenced to AF manuals are completely wrong!]
. . . he said. "You’d have to have Bush’s service record,
[Hell, you’ve got it posted on your own website, and on the website of practically every MSM outlet!]
. . . you’d have to have the Air Force regulations from 1971,
[Oh, we all know that all copies of those were shredded by Oliver North in the ‘80’s, right?]
. . . you’d have to know nearly all of the people involved directly at that time, including the squadron commander, who was Bush’s immediate superior, and his attitude at the time—you’d have to know all those things and weave all those things in."
[Sigh. Why bother even discussing this? All this information has been available for years on various loony left websites. Doesn’t Dan know that an entire cottage industry has grown up around this ancient story?]
Mr. Rather said he was well aware of reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post that had finely detailed examinations of inconsistencies in the memos. And he said he took those reports seriously and appreciated the "competitive response" of other news organizations. But despite a number of experts calling the memos forgeries, he said that "the truth of these documents lies in the signatures and in the content, not just the typeface and the font-style. Let me emphasize once again, these are not exact sciences. Not like DNA or fingerprints."
[Either they are fake or they are not. End of frickin’ story. And they’re fake.]
That was why, he said, half of the experts agreed and the other half didn’t. That supposed stalemate left nothing but the truth at the center of the documents.
[I'm gasping for breath at this one. Ummm, Dan, name ONE motherlovin’ expert, just freaking ONE that is willing to endure the contempt of their peers and authenticate these forgeries. Un-frickin’-believable.]
"In terms of the experts, you’re going to find an equal number of experts on the authenticity arguments," he said. "I don’t think that’s going to resolve the argument. The core truth of the reporting, I think it’s already clear that it’s true. And I think as time goes along, it will become even more apparent."
[Core truths trump hard, cold facts. Feelings beat out logic, every time.]
What about the Washington Post story of Sept. 14? The story pointed to discrepancies in military language, between the way Killian usually signed his letters and his signature on the memos CBS put on the air. And what about Mr. Bush’s address on one memo, "5000 Longmont #8, Houston," where he apparently no longer lived in 1972?
"Both of the allegations are wrong," he said. "I feel confident in saying that."
But when asked to offer a specific rebuttal to the observation about the address, Mr. Rather didn’t have one, saying only: "It’s our position, and I believe we demonstrated it …. The address doesn’t match the Bush service time frame—that’s their basic allegation? We think that’s wrong. We took a look at this, and we just think they’re wrong about it."
[Subject exhibits “magical thinking”, insists on the reality of his fabulist vision of the world in defiance of explicit evidence to the contrary. Yep, he’s a maroon.]
Read the whole damn thing.
He was giving me a running commentary on the Observer interview linked above , and I thought He was giving Captain Queeg the what-for. Therefore I left him with the keys to the kingdom while I went to slam my fingers in doors ( don't ask.)
Oh. My. God. Where to start?
Mr. Rather said that he and his longtime CBS producer, Mary Mapes, had investigated the story for nearly five years, finally convincing a source to give them the National Guard documents. He did not reveal the name of the source, but Mr. Rather said he was a man who had been reluctant to come forth with them because he’d been harassed by political operatives. "Whether one believes it or not, this person believed that he and his family had been harassed and even threatened," he said. "We were not able to confirm that, but his fear was that what had already been threats, intimidation, if he gave up the documents, could get worse—maybe a lot worse."
[Yeah, their source is a paranoid/schizophrenic with delusions of “threats” and “harassment” that CBS can’t validate, but they remain convinced that his documents are still good.]
Mr. Rather said that it would require an exceptional amount of knowledge to craft a forgery—and not just the typographical kind. "You’d have to have an in-depth knowledge of Air Force manuals from 1971,"
[Ha! As has been exhaustively documented, the referenced to AF manuals are completely wrong!]
. . . he said. "You’d have to have Bush’s service record,
[Hell, you’ve got it posted on your own website, and on the website of practically every MSM outlet!]
. . . you’d have to have the Air Force regulations from 1971,
[Oh, we all know that all copies of those were shredded by Oliver North in the ‘80’s, right?]
. . . you’d have to know nearly all of the people involved directly at that time, including the squadron commander, who was Bush’s immediate superior, and his attitude at the time—you’d have to know all those things and weave all those things in."
[Sigh. Why bother even discussing this? All this information has been available for years on various loony left websites. Doesn’t Dan know that an entire cottage industry has grown up around this ancient story?]
Mr. Rather said he was well aware of reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post that had finely detailed examinations of inconsistencies in the memos. And he said he took those reports seriously and appreciated the "competitive response" of other news organizations. But despite a number of experts calling the memos forgeries, he said that "the truth of these documents lies in the signatures and in the content, not just the typeface and the font-style. Let me emphasize once again, these are not exact sciences. Not like DNA or fingerprints."
[Either they are fake or they are not. End of frickin’ story. And they’re fake.]
That was why, he said, half of the experts agreed and the other half didn’t. That supposed stalemate left nothing but the truth at the center of the documents.
[I'm gasping for breath at this one. Ummm, Dan, name ONE motherlovin’ expert, just freaking ONE that is willing to endure the contempt of their peers and authenticate these forgeries. Un-frickin’-believable.]
"In terms of the experts, you’re going to find an equal number of experts on the authenticity arguments," he said. "I don’t think that’s going to resolve the argument. The core truth of the reporting, I think it’s already clear that it’s true. And I think as time goes along, it will become even more apparent."
[Core truths trump hard, cold facts. Feelings beat out logic, every time.]
What about the Washington Post story of Sept. 14? The story pointed to discrepancies in military language, between the way Killian usually signed his letters and his signature on the memos CBS put on the air. And what about Mr. Bush’s address on one memo, "5000 Longmont #8, Houston," where he apparently no longer lived in 1972?
"Both of the allegations are wrong," he said. "I feel confident in saying that."
But when asked to offer a specific rebuttal to the observation about the address, Mr. Rather didn’t have one, saying only: "It’s our position, and I believe we demonstrated it …. The address doesn’t match the Bush service time frame—that’s their basic allegation? We think that’s wrong. We took a look at this, and we just think they’re wrong about it."
[Subject exhibits “magical thinking”, insists on the reality of his fabulist vision of the world in defiance of explicit evidence to the contrary. Yep, he’s a maroon.]
Read the whole damn thing.
