Did President George W. Bush dodge the draft during the Vietnam War, as Dan Rather’s report asserted just before the 2004 election—the report that got Dan Rather fired?
Well, the BBC reporter Greg Palast did the same story a year before. Palast and the BBC stand by their story, part of which is in this video.
But Palast is not at all sympathetic with Dan Rather, who he says “cut a back-room deal to shut his mouth, grab his ankles, and let his network retract a story he knew to be absolutely true.” For Palast’s full unflattering take on Dan Rather’s suit, click here.
That was the headline and the full editorial in the pages of The Rocky Mountain Collegian on Friday, the paper of Colorado State University, followed by the brief explanation, “This column represents the views of the Collegian’s editorial board.” Campus administrators in charge of the communications department said they will launch an internal investigation into “the decision-making process” that led to publishing the editorial. The director of student media said people who want to complain can contact him directly. What if they want to commend the editorial board?
More about the response of the editorial from The Rocky Moutain Collegian’s own pages, here.
I can’t help but be on Dan’s side, now that he’s the underdog.
The LA Times, at first, did a very fair article on the suit. Reporter, Matea Gold, on September 20, pointed out that Sumner Redsone told Time magazine in an interview shortly after Rather was fired from CBS (for the story that was unfavorable to Bush), that Redstone wanted a Republican win in 2004 because it was good for his company (“I do believe that a Republican Administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one.”).
But now the LA Times has joined the other newspapers in the mudslinging with articles about Dan’s “ego”
and how he’s crazy and needs to “stay on script.” Matea Gold is no longer covering the story.
Let’s focus on the theme of Rather’s story shortly before the 2004 general election: Pres. George W. Bush used family influence to avoid serving in the Vietnam War. Well, he did, didn’t he? His opponent in the presidential race volunteered, and was a hero. Dick Chaney got five (that’s 5) deferments to keep him out of that jungle war. Not too good a record for an Administration that has started a “never ending war.”
Rather has pledged that if he wins the suit, he’ll take CBS’s money and give it to independent media. Go, Dan!
The spin on Dan Rather’s lawsuit against CBS is that he is crazy for “[dredging] up the worst moment of his career.” But really, Rather is dredging up a bad moment in media history when CBS wouldn’t stand up to the White House and back up a story that made Bush look bad right before his reelection. I saw Dan Rather’s apology and firing after his story in 2004 that President Bush got preferential treatment when he was in the National Guard just as he does: “The story was true,” Rather said. “The documents, I still believe them to be true. I believed them to be true at the time.”
“I think we’re going to find out just how much interference at the corporate level there is in national news stories,” Rather told the Washington Post on Friday.
The only question I have for Rather is: What took you so long?
“Terrell Owens, of the Dallas Cowboys, poked fun at New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick when he leaned against the goal post and raised the football to his face as if he were videotaping with it.
Referees called a 15-yard penalty on Owens for using the goal post as a prop.” – L.A. Times 9/17/2007”
Mr. Owens then took both goal posts and put them on either side of the end zone, stood between them and recited Shakespeare, at which point he was assessed a 25-yard penalty for using the goal posts as a proscenium.
Later in the same game, upon scoring his third touchdown, Owens laid the posts on their sides so that the points were touching, thus creating a rectangle that could have been construed as being a movie screen, stood before them so as to be framed within it, and was assessed 20-yard penalty for using the goal posts to mimic the aspect ratio of a standard 35 mm film projection.
Although Owens complained about the call, League Commissioner Roger Goodell later defended the actions of the refs. “Although League rules confine their language specifically to the craft and art of the theatre, strictly regulating the use of stage properties, period costumes, and the various stage configurations historically associated with that delightful art form—including football in the round, thrust-stage football and “environmental” football, where the players actually engage the audience in an immediate, visceral experience by actually playing the game in the stands and dealing body-crushing blocks and tackles on the spectators—the spirit of the rules clearly include, by implication, film properties as well, including all of the accoutrements, accessories and technology of that magical and ultimately mysterious medium.”
“It was all in good fun,” said Owens, who was subsequently fined $500 for talking.
This story is already being spun by the AP–video clips edited together out of order to make it look like this college student was belligerent and out of line. Watch this for the true order of events. After Andrew Meyer is cuffed, tasered, and taken out of the auditorium, the Florida police say he was trying to incite a riot. Is that what it looks like to you?
“Whatever happened, the police had a reason, had made their decision that there was something they needed to do. Then it’s a law enforcement issue, not mine,” [Kerry] told The Associated Press in Washington.
Kerry posted a response on his web site in which he states he did not know Meyer was tasered, and claims Meyer barged to the front of the line to ask his questions.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s memoir comes out today. Though he mostly writes about economics—and his economic disagreements with the Bush Administration’s wonton spending, the most controversial sentence in the book is about Iraq. Greenspan writes: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” (Read Bob Woodward’s book review here.)
Reporter Bob Woodward interviewed Greenspan again in today’s Washington Post to give Greenspan a chance to “clarify” what he meant, because the above quote has caused a freak out. If you don’t feel like reading the entire interview, allow me to paraphrase: “Hey, I say it’s about oil, and I said it’s about oil to everyone I spoke to in the Administration in the run-up to the war. Including Bush and Cheney. But Bush and Cheney may not have said those exact words in front of me.”
The guy ABC news hired as a terrorism consultant five years ago was just forced to resign after it was revealed he lied about everything. Frenchman Alexis Debat’s academic credentials were faked. His Washington “connections” were a sham. And all those published interviews with the biggest names in government were completely made up.
Debat also resigned (on Thursday) his position as a senior fellow on counterterrorism issues at the Nixon Center.
I guess Judith Miller was luckier than Debat. Miller lied and lied in the pages of The New York Times. After leaving the paper, she was hired by The Manhattan Institute, which Miller says “is doing pioneering work in policing and counter-terrorism.” (At least at this right-wing establishment, she doesn’t have to pretend to be “objective.”)
So what’s up with ABC and these think tanks? If you say the “right” words in this paranoid climate you get a high-paying job? They’ll take any old fool as a “counterterrorism expert?”
On Monday, the LA Times ran a lengthy article on the dangers of bisphenol-A, found in flexible plastics, leaching into everything the chemical comes in contact with. Most alarmingly, bisphenol-A is used in manufacturing most baby bottles, sippy cups, pacifiers, the lining of most canned foods, plastic food storage containers, plastic water bottles, etc. Bisphenol-A mimics the hormone estrogen and is an endocrine disrupter. Estrogen can do the most damage to baby boys’ developing reproductive systems, but elevated levels of estrogen have also been linked to breast and ovarian cancer in women.
Though the LA Times article suggested it is “impossible” for a consumer to navigate store shelves to find products that are safe—not so! Chuck all your #3 and #7 plastic, for starters. Then check out “Z Recommends”—a fantastic blog that has researched most of the baby bottles and sippy cups on the market to see which ones are safe. The sippy cup section has recommendations for adult water bottles as well. Click here for bottles, here for sippy cups, here for pacifiers.
And, NEVER microwave your food in a plastic container! Heat causes a break down in polycarbonate plastic, which in turn releases bisphenol-A into your food.
This six minute film was shown at the Toronto Film Festival, and coincides with the release of Naomi Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” (See the excerpt from the book and link, in yesterday’s post.)
Her explosive new book exposes the lie that free markets thrive on freedom. In the Guardian’s first exclusive extract, the No Logo author reveals the business of exploiting disaster.
“I started researching the free market’s dependence on the power of shock four years ago, during the early days of the occupation of Iraq. I reported from Baghdad on Washington’s failed attempts to follow “shock and awe” with shock therapy – mass privatization, complete free trade, a 15% flat tax, a dramatically downsized government. Afterwards I traveled to Sri Lanka, several months after the devastating 2004 tsunami, and witnessed another version of the same maneuver: foreign investors and international lenders had teamed up to use the atmosphere of panic to hand the entire beautiful coastline over to entrepreneurs who quickly built large resorts, blocking hundreds of thousands of fishing people from rebuilding their villages. By the time Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it was clear that this was now the preferred method of advancing corporate goals: using moments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering. Most people who survive a disaster want the opposite of a clean slate: they want to salvage whatever they can and begin repairing what was not destroyed. “When I rebuild the city I feel like I’m rebuilding myself,” said Cassandra Andrews, a resident of New Orleans’ heavily damaged Lower Ninth Ward, as she cleared away debris after the storm. But disaster capitalists have no interest in repairing what once was. In Iraq, Sri Lanka and New Orleans, the process deceptively called “reconstruction” began with finishing the job of the original disaster by erasing what was left of the public sphere.”
Yes, she did say Iraq had WMD. Yes, she did all but say that Iraq had nuclear weapons with that “mushroom cloud” comment on CNN back in 2003. Her “diplomacy” during a meeting with Russian President Putin several months ago resulted in the Russians canceling the photo op following the meeting. So what are Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s plans when “W”, and she, is out of office? She plans to return to Stanford University in 2009 (Rice is currently on leave as a poly sci prof while serving the Pres.). But, it seems, many in the University don’t want her back—faculty and student body alike. Check out the article in The Stanford Daily… but really, check out the reader comments following the article.
For more details on how Condi hopes to restore her reputation by returning to academia, see the New York Times article that was published September 1.
In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi reports on how President George W. Bush-appointed contractors in Iraq are exploiting American tax dollars. Here, Taibbi narrates a video exploring the grim details of the situation even further.
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