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Bush
Gloats Over Dan Rather
If only Rather had used his head...
by Robert Parry
George W. Bush, in his memoir Decision Points, says he was shown
a copy of a purported memo
about his shirking of his National Guard duty before a story citing the
document appeared on 60 Minutes,
and he gloats over the resulting controversy that cost the jobs
of Dan Rather and his producer Mary Mapes...
As the right-wing media defined the story, the mainstream media quickly
fell into line. The press corps downplayed
the overwhelming evidence that Bush had ducked out on his National
Guard assignment, which had kept him out of
the Vietnam War, and instead competed for scoops about shortcomings in
CBS document vetting. Instead of Bush
being the focus, the harsh spotlight swung to Rather and producer Mary
Mapes, who just a few month earlier had
broken the story of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq...
Curiously, one world leader who dared confront Bush with the issue of
his (and America's) hypocrisy on the news
media was Vladimir Putin. In Decision
Points, Bush recounts a meeting at which he called Putin on the
carpet for
a "crackdown on the free press" in Russia. According to Bush, Putin
responded by saying, "Don’t lecture me about
the free press, not after you fired that reporter."
Bush wrote, 'It dawned on me what he was referring to.
ha
ha
Who believes that?
'Vladimir, are you talking about
Dan Rather?' I asked. He said he was. I said, 'I strongly suggest you
not say that
in public. The American people will think you don’t understand our
system.'" However, the sad truth may be that
Putin understood how the American system worked all too well. Bush’s
new revelation that the White House was
quick to spot – and presumably exploit – inadequacies in the CBS memos
suggests that the removal of Dan Rather
wasn't entirely without high-level manipulation.
I semi-respected Dan Rather before he pulled this idiotic fuckup.
He got played by Karl Rove because he didn't bother to check his damn facts.
How you going to accuse a sitting president of going AWOL without checking your damn facts?
I'm guessing Rather was being chivalrous, protecting his producer's fuckup,
but Rather ended up giving Bush a LIFETIME PASS on going AWOL.
No reporter will ever touch this story again.
Bush has been permanantly inoculated for all time - thanks to Dan Rather's fuckup.
History books will tell of war hero Bush's war exploits.
History books will tell how Bush's military experience allowed him to run
the hugely successful Iraq and Afghanistan wars, much to his country's gratitude.
It makes me sick.