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This whole fiasco may have created a new word: Seebeeessing.

See-bee-ess’-ing: To seebeeess. To proclaim one’s neutrality while providing ammunition to one side or the other.

Damon:

CBS is in a good deal of hot water here. Not only are they guilty, at the very least, of shoddy reporting and horrendous background research, they are now guilty of showing poor judgement in their approach.

They have connected themselves with the Kerry campaign by putting Burkett in touch with the campaign. We dont know their motivation for this, but it certainly breaches the line of objective journalism. Their reason for doing this is not so important as the fact that they did it—to have done so creates a conflict of interest.

this entire episode is now a windfall for the Republicans. Bush is now innoculated to some extent against charges about his TANG days, since he can righteously assert the appearance of a plot to get him by CBS. The public will now view any such charges through the lens of the CBS fiasco.

Count on the Republicans to keep this episode in the news as long as possible. That’s why they are asking for further investigation etc. The longer this thing plays out, the better for Bush.

You can not ignore that on the same day the 60 Minutes story was run the Boston Globe did their Bush didn’t meet his Guard obligations piece. This comes months after the earlier pieces by Robinson and with the latest report based upon no new evidence.

Also, Drudge had all of it on the Tuesday before when he said that Wednesday was going to be bash Bush day. Added to this were the first interviews with Kitty Kelly and the announcement of the Fortunate Son campaign by the DNC.

All of this points to a coordinated DNC campaign effort. And I think, just as Drudge knew it was coming, the Bush campaign new it was coming and probably had copies of the memos. That’s why a first time ever poster on Free Republic was able to say that they were forgeries and that this should be further pursued, getting the ball rolling.

More than that joe, in my view the coordination of C-BS and the DNC/Kerry campaign’s Operation Fortunate Son may have broken campaign finance laws.

Dan Blather, See-BS, and the Kerry campaign all drank the kool-aid on this one.
Do any Dem.’s want to debate their campign plans for 2008 ?

Because this one is over !

Eric:

It certainly bears looking into, especially with the disclosure that CBS producer Mary Mapes called Kerry campaign staffer Joe Lockhart about Burkett. Lets see how it all falls out before jumping to conclusions.

I find it a horrible lapse of journalistic integrity for Dan Rather to have used the term “unimpeachable source” when referring to the then anonymous Bill Burkett. Burkett may be lots of things, but at the very least he is a controversial figure, and nothing like an unimpeachable source. This was just blatant stonewalling from Rather.

My prediction is that the next impetus from the “wacko left” will be to try to push the “It was a Karl Rove trick” idea. What a funny argument to pursue…..its essentially based on saying, “We are too stupid to be able to figure out this was a trick—that means the other guy is bad.” What this argument really says is that Republicans are just plain smarter than Democrats. And while I agree with the Republican platform, I dont subscribe to that argument.

Meanwhile, the mess in Iraq gets messier every day, I can’t afford health insurance, I’m under-employed and Bush wants to give me more tax breaks. That’s not what I want Mr. Bush. I want to be able to afford to live in this country and get decent health care when I need it.

The CBS memos mean nothing to me. They do not affect the things I care about: affordable health care and catching Osama bin Laden.

Magicians fool their audiences by using misdirection, the act of getting the audience to focus on something else why they perform their slight-of-hand.

In my mind, the month of August was used up by the media’s relentless pursuit of Bush’s national guard duty, an issue that is meaningless in this election. The month of September looks like it’s going to be used by the controversy around the CBS memos; again something that is meaningless in this election. The Bush campaign and their operatives are the magicians here, getting the media to focus on the crap that doesn’t matter so that the stuff that really does matter doesn’t get talked about.

Mr Bush, where is Osama?

joebag writes: “this entire episode is now a windfall for the Republicans. Bush is now innoculated to some extent against charges about his TANG days, since he can righteously assert the appearance of a plot to get him by CBS. The public will now view any such charges through the lens of the CBS fiasco.”

Interesting. I don’t suppose anyone’s contemplated the possiblity that this is a setup by the Bush campaign to bring about just such an innoculation?

Alejo:

I refer you to my previous post, and suggest you read entire posts before responding. I noted that the “left” had already proposed the dirty trick idea, and that it will now try to really push that idea.

Wow, IFFF Rove pulled the strings on this thing, DAMN is he good!! To have done so would be akin to buying CBS a nice strong rope, getting Mary Mapes (the producer) to fashion it into a hangman’s noose, and then convincing Dan Rather that he should try on this fetching new “necktie”. IF CBS is truly THAT stupid, then they deserve to be number 3 out of 3 in the network ratings.

My prediction is that the next impetus from the “wacko left” will be to try to push the “It was a Karl Rove trick” idea. What a funny argument to pursue….

I bet the memos would have mattered to the left if they had turned out to be fully legit… Now that its a scandal, the situation is suddenly unimportant.

As for Osama, let’s be frank, there’s no President who’s going to come up with the “super tracking tactic” to catch bin Laden. Bush, Kerry, or Pooky the Clown. Our special forces are tracking Al Queda’s leaders as best they can, and the identity of the person keeping the chair warm in the oval office isn’t going to have a huge impact, unless of course you want much more brutal, scorched earth searches, in which case you’ll need to find someone more extreme than Bush or Kerry.

As for healthcare, neither candidate has any great ideas on that. Medical savings accounts are a good first step, as is the idea of allowing smaller employers to collectively bargain for care rate cuts.

Do you mean me when referring to the “wacko left?”

This whole election is (becoming?) a joke. Fonts, kerning, and baseline shift as election debate? Ugh! I wouldn’t be surprised if it were all another right wing ploy to promote voter apathy, but to preserve what little integrity this election might have left, I won’t mention it.

D’oh! (Emphasis added)

I made this comment in Media Responsibility by Sebastian. Of course I was joking but I wouldn’t be surprised if the radical left takes up the argument.

I agree with Cameron, The National Guard stuff with Bush is a bunch of junk, I was wanting to see REAL issues debated here. Instead we have a Democrat candidate who is more intersted in lying and covering up than saying what he can do to help the country. I admit Kerry isn’t a idiot like Dukakis was but he is no JFK either. I can’t believe for the life of me he would be so STUPID to be a part of the CBS debacle. HE deserves to lose and Rather should have been fired yesterday

Instead we have a Democrat candidate who is more intersted in lying and covering up […]

Lying and covering up what?

I can’t believe for the life of me he would be so STUPID to be a part of the CBS debacle.

Ah. Maybe I took this literally when I shouldn’t have. So you actually think Kerry was involved but you were saying you can’t believe as a rhetorical device, right? I don’t understand, the article clearly shows that the primary blame rests on Burkett with the scandal falling on CBS. If Kerry’s camp were involved, why would Burkett demand to have CBS arrange a meeting with them?

And the circumstantial evidence that Fortunate Son came out around the same time is just that, circumstantial. The story is old. Greg Palast did the story back in 99.

Indeed, Dan is in hot water for a report my own investigative team put in Britain’s Guardian papers and on BBC TV years ago. Way back in 1999, I wrote that former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes had put in the fix for little George Bush to get out of ‘Nam and into the Air Guard. (source)

Of course. It’s a complete coincidence. That’s why it didn’t happen sooner, right? It just happened to start during the same media cycle. And Joe Lockhart probably takes random calls from all sorts of people that CBS reporters just happen to ask him to call, for no apparent reason. ;) Just another isolated incident.

Actually, the more suspicious thing is that Kerry literature previously referred to these documents MONTHS before the story broke, which makes me wonder “how did they know the documents existed before CBS did?” Hmmmm….

Probably another isolated incident.

Cameron,

Meanwhile, the mess in Iraq gets messier every day, I can’t afford health insurance, I’m under-employed and Bush wants to give me more tax breaks. That’s not what I want Mr. Bush. I want to be able to afford to live in this country and get decent health care when I need it.

I’m curious. How exactly do you afford health insurance with higher taxes? Better, I’ve never had a job that was due to the actions or inactions of a President. If you want to lower the costs of living you’d be better off voting Republican. John Kerry’s plan is to raise taxes.

I can’t believe that lying is now irrelevant for the left. But if there is any misdirection going on here it is self-inflicted.

Damon,

And Joe Lockhart probably takes random calls from all sorts of people that CBS reporters just happen to ask him to call, for no apparent reason.

Not just any CBS reporter, Dan Rather. Despite the demonization that he’s getting whipped with over this, he is a news icon. But I agree, this is really bad behavior on CBS’s part and just plain dumb on Lockhart’s part.

Actually, the more suspicious thing is that Kerry literature previously referred to these documents MONTHS before the story broke, which makes me wonder “how did they know the documents existed before CBS did?” Hmmmm….

See, I didn’t know that (got a link?), but like I said, the news story is five years old. The likelihood that both the Kerry campaign and Burkett (or his “source”) had access to intel about the same memoranda is within the realm of possibility. Suspicious coincidence? Yeah. Convict-able circumstantial evidence? No. Also: even if the Kerry camp found out about the documents through the same source at an earlier time, this doesn’t implicate them in some conspiracy with CBS.

As long as the extent of the Kerry camp’s provable involvement with this junk is less than or equal to the Bush camp’s connections with SBVT, this won’t hurt Kerry.

I don’t want to get caught up defending the Kerry camp on this, though. I hated the fact that they ran with Fortunate Son. It was severely ill-advised and wholly inappropriate. If the premise of the Kerry campaign is that Bush is unfit for president then why would they have to go back 30 years to find something to attack him with? That’s just wrong-headed.

Hopefully the upcoming debates will get this stupid election back on some kind of a track.

Cameron,

The CBS memos mean nothing to me. They do not affect the things I care about: affordable health care and catching Osama bin Laden.

Do you really think that John Kerry will find Osama bin Laden? How? By reducing our intelligence services and military? Kerry’s record in the Senate is not impressive; he has been on the wrong side of history again and again. That is why he has had to focus on four months he spent in Vietnam, instead of his nineteen years in the Senate. Maybe Kerry will get the UN involved in finding Osama, the ineffective, do-nothing UN that allows genocides and hides documents from investigators looking into the oil-for-food scandal. Oh yeah, the UN will solve every problem…

As for affordable healthcare, what do you want the government to do? Whenever the government gets involved to make something “affordable,” it is a disaster, whether it is rent controls, minimum wages or something else. Prices send messages to both consumers and suppliers; when government acts to limit prices in some way, it prevents prices from doing their job. The end result is that a shortage occurs. Look at Canada. Look at England. Doctors are running away from both places; as a result, health care quality is declining. Do we really want that here? If you want to bring down the “cost” of healthcare, look no further than Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, and his ilk, who made millions arguing junk science in the courtroom. A true tort reform will lower the cost of healthcare.

Is it ignorance of the facts or revisionist history?

Soon thereafter, the Democratic National Committee launched Operation Fortunate Son, a campaign to impugn the President’s service in the National Guard, a campaign which was suspiciously well timed, coinciding with CBS’s breaking story on the uncovered Bush documents. Something was rotten in the state of American Politics.

The DNC has been impugning Bush’s NG record since last year. Whassup with this quote?

You only have to imagine this scenario:

1) FOX News runs an explosive story based on Vietnam-era documents supposedly written by one of Kerry’s commanders that say Kerry lied to get medals. Wow—dynamite stuff.

2) The VERY NEXT DAY, as the RNC begins airing ads for the first time that repeat these accusations, the documents are revealed to be forgeries.

3) Fox stands by their story for a week, insisting they have an “unimpeachable source,” and anyway the substance of the story is more important than whether or not the documents are forged. Brit Hume demands that Kerry answer the allegations!

4) The documents turn out to have been passed to Fox by Oliver North who got them from Anne Coulter.

Can you imagine the outrage and media piling-on than would ensue?

The scenario I imagine …since that is what seems to be the thread here….

Is that Bush admits he was doing cocaine the night before the physical and couldn’t pass the exam and experienced several “lost” days while binging, after a past homosexual partner in Houston reveals the whereabouts of “Georgy Boy”
and the “experimental” days of George

That Killian’s secretary admits to supplying some coke to George for entre’ to some privileged kids parties.

Eric confesses that Kerry’s plan for insurance has nothing to do with “socialized medicine” and doesn’t have anything to do with raising taxes. He says George told him it did and he believed it was true.

JBOD declares Karl his new Goebels and purrs, “ain’t he good? He says we’re winning in Iraq and defeating Al Qaeda there.”

Martin goes to work for CBS.

And oh Yeah the biggest fantasy of all, GW wins by a landslide, because Americans really are just that stupid.

Coordination? If you’ve got any notion of the production cycle on 60 Minutes, you’d know that even if they were talking about the documents (everybody denies they were discussed), it was too late for Lockhart to have played a role in the genesis of the segment, and what’s more, far too late for Burkett to offer the documents to him.

It’s a shame Republicans can’t tell the difference between a contact and a conspiracy. Maybe our asses wouldn’t be in the war we are now, if they weren’t so quick to jump to conclusions.

Martin-
In case you haven’t noticed, there is a pile-on occuring. Every rival network and newspaper is going with the story. You don’t have to imagine a countervailing case, it exists!

Another case of Conservatives unable to acknowlege allies, I guess.

All in all, this seems like psychological warfare to me, more than any factual inquiry. Crappy reporting and questionable decisions went down. Question is, why is it so damn important for Republicans to crucify a media figure here? If Bush’s people aren’t careful, this could backfire on them. God knows there have been enough times when people associated with the Bush administration have forgotten to keep their mouths shut at the right moments. Take Grover Norquist calling the Greatest Generation anti-American.

I guess the current party leadership, belittling those who fought to preserve our freedoms overseas comes easy.

The problem with this potentially damaging the campaign of Kerry is that this is in juxtaposition to te massive problems in Iraq. I personally think this would have taken Kerry down if the Iraq mess wasn’t so looming.

What people will be voting on, atleast in part, is on the policy problems in our war on terror. The CBS problems have made a dent, but not anything that Maaco can’t hammer out.

For example:

American southwest’s anger over the Bush/Vicente Fox illegal alien amnesty situation.

The possibility of the US invading Iran for a “regime change” apparently. Not to mention this coming on the heels of an unfinished democracy in Iraq which is on the heels of an unfinished Afghanistan. Potentially three very screwed up countries to collect a bill on that the wealthy with their tax cuts won’t and most likely don’t have to pay for.

The potential loss of the marriage tax credit that is being caused by Bush’s whacky spending.

The possibility as many gen x-ers seem to believe that there could come a draft for all of these wars that Bush will be engaging in.

The tax defferals being made permanent. The problem being “HOW do you make a ‘deferral’ permanent?” then it’s not a deferral it’s now a permanent loss of revenue that the middle classes will have to absorb.

Massive inflation/budgetary misappropriations and goofy spending/ no balanced budget.

This is just to name a few. So I say that Kerry took but a dent and this memogate baloney should blow over eventually being it only seems to resonate with those who are mathamatically challenged and have no economic or foreign policy foresight.

So, everything in the forged memos is true - Bush still doesn’t deny it - but this hurts Kerry? Dream on.

BTW, I took a look at Kerry’s healthcare plan here a while back. I did the same with Bush’s.

Joseph,

Read the article. Dan Rather didn’t call Lockhart. It was his producer (or so we are told). And in any case, it is not the producer’s place to do such things, as the press is widely reporting today.

Dave (Remer),

Oh I’m not saying the DNC just started to impugn Bush at that time. I’m just pointing out the suspicious timing of Fortunate Son and the Rather Story.

In regards to this CBS scandal, I would advise all to take their cue from other media organizations who are looking at this debacle with disbelief. The Washington Post in particular has been all over this. When you are critized by members of your own field, then you have a problem. The circumstances of the case does make one wonder though how could so-called professional journalists let this story get as far as it did without doing a little more research. What’s the frequency Dan?

Stephen:

What in your mind would be a good reason for CBS producer Mary Mapes to have urged Kerry campaign official Joe Lockhart to call Bill Burkett? Looking at this from a journalistic aspect, I cant find a single reason that would constitute good judgement on her part. Perhaps you have a reason that I have missed.

Two things amaze me in this:

1) That CBS overlooked so many opportunities to question the documents. They were proven false so quickly that it makes CBS look positively stupid. It would almost be better for CBS to say they never bothered to check them for accuracy.

2) That Dan Rather called Bill Burkett an “unimpeachable source”. Burkett is as partisan as they come, and has a grudge to boot. This doesnt disqualify him from providing information, but it certainly disqualifies him as an “unimipeachable source”. Did Rather actually think his claim would hold up to even modest scrutiny. I can only surmise that Rather hoped that Burkett’s name would never surface. The moment it did, Rather’s claim was invalidated.

There are many strings beginning to show in this whole episode. We know that CBS rushed to judgement on this and screwed up in the process. We also know there was a CONNECTION (not coordination) between CBS, Burkett and the Kerry campaign. This bears watching and checking. Its terrible news for Kerry and great news for Bush

Oh, the irony!

In its rush to air its now discredited story about President George W. Bush’s National Guard service, CBS bumped another sensitive piece slated for the same “60 Minutes” broadcast: a half-hour segment about how the U.S. government was snookered by forged documents purporting to show Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium from Niger.

2) That Dan Rather called Bill Burkett an “unimpeachable source”.

When I first heard Rather mention his “unimpeachable source”, it occurred to me that, by definition, the only person it could not have been was Bill Clinton.