Month: September 2004

Kerry is hitting his stride. Here’s part of what he told the National Guard:

“[The president] did not tell you that with each passing day, we’re seeing more chaos, more violence, more indiscriminate killings. He did not tell you that with each passing week, our enemies are getting bolder – that Pentagon officials report that entire regions of Iraq are now in the hands of terrorists and extremists. He did not tell you that with each passing month, stability and security seem farther and farther away… You deserve a president who will not play politics with national security, who will not ignore his own intelligence, while living in a fantasy world of spin, and who will give the American people the truth about the challenge our brave men and women face on the front lines.”

Just tell the truth, Senator. And expose the incompetence of this administration’s war management. Every day.

No one doubts that Rathergate is a huge story for the mainstream media – but for a blog that focuses only on media? Today, Romenesko puts Rathergate as his ninth story. The big stories that beat it out for attention? A new editor at the “Chicago Defender.” “Humor writer discovers online audience is a mean crowd.” “Houston Chron praises Smiley for giving $1 million to school.” And: “Bush hasn’t taken a question from campaign journos in weeks.” (The Washington Post story that Romenesko links to leads with John Kerry’s reticence.) Romenesko has every right to run a left-wing media column. But, really. Does he think anyone believes he isn’t spinning frantically every day?
CORRECTION: The Rathergate flap was, in fact, the fourth item posted by Romenesko, not the ninth. I waas reading it in reverse chronological order.

It turns out that Faghag.com, I mean Wonkette, was citing this much longer list of blogosphere fashion. My bad.

Ryan Lizza observes the surreal nature of Dr Pangloss’s re-election tour:

[F]or the most part, spending time on the trail with Bush is like being transported to a parallel universe. The only music is Christian rock and country tunes about plain-talking everymen. The only people who ask the president questions are his most feverish supporters, never the press. In this alternate universe, Iraq and Afghanistan are marching effortlessly toward democracy. The economy is, in the words of former Broncos quarterback John Elway, who introduces Bush in Greenwood Village, “the best in the world.” John Kerry, whose platform is to the right of Clinton’s in 1992, is calling for a massive expansion of government.

Yes, it’s working – for now. But if the voters realize at some point in this campaign that the president is simply living in a dreamworld, they might vote for someone who, for all his faults, is at least able to recognize reality.

Wonkette weighs in on various bloggers’ fashionable home-wear:

• Millionaire socialist Katrina vanden Heuvel: Tin foil hat; pannier hoops, skirt and bodice of vintage peach jacquard silk with scatter beads & ribbon roses
• Andrew Sullivan: White leather beaded wedding dress with matching jacket & Morticia train
• Josh Marshall: Milla Jovanovich unisex Joan of Arc mail suit with flattering shoulder pads & Teflon jodhpurs

Teflon jodhpurs in the Starbucks on Connecticut Avenue? You go, girl.

In a post today, Jonah Goldberg says:

For a great many of us — journalists, bloggers, citizens etc — this story has absolutely nothing to do with Bush. This is my own personal sense of it, but I don’t think very many people who are wading into the Rather story care about what Bush did thirty years ago. I’m sure quite a few of them even dislike Bush a great deal or they aren’t supporting him. Andrew Sullivan (who’s got a good outraged post today) despises Bush. Howard Kurtz is no partisan. The good folks at ABC News are never at the VRWC bingo night Etc, etc.

I think he’s right in his basic point. But I do want to quibble: I do not despise Bush; and I think it’s highly unhelpful to conflate criticism of this president with hatred. I noticed this last night watching Shep Smith on Fox News introduce a segment on Kerry’s criticism of the president as “Bush-bashing.” Yes, there is Bush-bashing. Michael Moore, for example. But there’s also Bush-criticism. I have never met the president, although I know a few people close to him. But he seems like a nice enough guy to me. I’m angry at the way in which he has clearly botched a war I believe in and want to succeed. I’m mad that he has ended fiscal conservatism for a generation, attacked gay civil rights and empowered the religious right. But that doesn’t mean I despise him. I’ve written plenty of fawning things about him in the past – as well as sharp criticism from as long ago as the spring of 2000. I just think he has failed in the most fundamental task set before him: to win the war in Iraq – the primary front in the war on terror. I think he failed to prepare sufficiently, has been too slow to correct error, and has a dangerously out-of-touch attitide to the growing crisis. My anger is deeper because I once believed and hoped. But it is not hatred.

The Green Zone in Baghdad is no longer completely secure. Money quote:

US military officers in Baghdad have warned they cannot guarantee the security of the perimeter around the Green Zone, the headquarters of the Iraqi government and home to the US and British embassies, according to security company employees.
At a briefing earlier this month, a high-ranking US officer in charge of the zone’s perimeter said he had insufficient soldiers to prevent intruders penetrating the compound’s defences.
The US major said it was possible weapons or explosives had already been stashed in the zone, and warned people to move in pairs for their own safety. The Green Zone, in Baghdad’s centre, is one of the most fortified US installations in Iraq. Until now, militants have not been able to penetrate it.

(My italics). The president has no excuse for not knowing the disaster that his conduct of the war has unleashed, as his own internal assessment has been bleak. But he refuses to ackowledge reality – perhaps the most dangerous characteristic in a war-president. At this rate, it won’t matter that John Kerry seems unable to make the case against the president. The shambles that this president has created in Iraq war will do it for him.

I have to say that the risible statement given by CBS News last night finally did it for me. Who do these people think they are? They have failed to find a single expert who will back the authenticity of the memos; their own experts say they warned CBS not to go with the story; Killian’s secretary thinks they’re fakes … and yet Rather and Heyward say they stand by their story and will continue to investigate the provenance and dubiousness of the forgeries! This beggars belief. How do I put this to Rather: it doesn’t matter if the underlying story is true. All that matters is that CBS’s evidence is fake. Get it? End of story. For what it’s worth: I believe Bush got into the Guard because of his dad’s connections. I believe he probably didn’t perform his duties adequately in his final two years. When I first read the CBS story, I thought the docs were “devastating.” I’m not backing this president for re-election. But all that is completely beside the frigging point. Journalists are supposed to provide accurate evidence for their claims. CBS didn’t. And its response to the critics is to stonewall and try and change the subject. The correct response – the one they’d teach you in kindergarten journalism class – is immediately to check the authenticity of the documents as best you can, and if the doubts persist, to apologize immediately and yank the story. Can you imagine what CBS News would do if a government official found to be peddling fake documents refused to acknowledge it? And kept repeating his story nonetheless? They’d be all over it. But, you see, they are above politicians. They are above criticism. And they are stratospheres above bloggers who caught them red-handed.

THE COUP DE GRACE: And then this astonishing statement from Rather to Howie Kurtz:

“If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I’d like to break that story. Any time I’m wrong, I want to be right out front and say, ‘Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.'”

Memo to Rather: you can’t break that story, because someone else in pajamas already did. Check the frequency, Kenneth. You are so far from being out front on this, you are leagues behind in the dust. Have you heard of the Internet? You can find it on that weird machine in your office they call a computer. All this proves is the fathomless cocooning of Rather and Heyward. They still think this is the 1980s. They have no idea what media world they are living in. Like Howell Raines, they are so out of it, they don’t even know they’re finished. Above all, they are not acting as journalists. They are acting as political operators, determined to win a news cycle, to inflict as much damage on their opponents as possible, while stonewalling on their own glaring, obvious errors. So this is a test of the blogosphere. We have to keep at these guys day and night to force them to live up to the most basic ethical requirements of their profession. After all this stonewalling and arrogance, an apology and retraction will no longer suffice. These guys have to resign or be fired.

THE ROLE OF BIAS: I was hammered on the Paula Zahn show last night for claiming that the reason for this colossal embarrassment is the obvious anti-Bush bias of Dan Rather and CBS News. No, I don’t think they tried to frame the president (although at this point, nothing would surprise me). I think they so desperately wanted the documents to be legit that they rushed this story onto the air without taking the proper precautions. I know the feeling. I remember back when I was editing TNR, we were sent documents that seemed to prove that Senator Phil Gramm had once been in the KKK. Everything looked legit. And, of course, we were thrilled to have a big story about a politician most of us deeply disliked. But it’s precisely the story that you want to be true that you have to be the most careful about. After many weeks of investigation, and much emotional investment in the story, the docs turned out to be fakes. Bummer, as far as we were concerned. The story never ran. I’m not bragging. It was self-interest that kept us from making an ass out of ourselves. And we were running a liberal opinion magazine, not a newspaper or “60 Minutes.” So what possessed Rather? I think he loathes this president so much that he couldn’t bring himself to see the fakes in front of him. That’s bad enough. But to keep digging in and to try the rescue the story by further reporting is a far worse offense. He’s got to go.

WHO FAKED THEM? Which brings us to the real, juicy question: who did this? I don’t know. Michael Dobbs’ story in today’s Washington Post obviously points toward Bill Burkett. Was he sophisticated enough to create fakes? Did anyone help him? I have no idea. But we should find out. And if and when CBS acknowledges that the docs are fakes, they have no reason to protect their source. He’s not a source. He’s a fraud. Who is he? Answer, the question, Dan. Answer it.

“It sure is a great country, where someone like Moore trashes the president and gets away with it – and makes so much money!” – a young Iranian, seeing the real lesson of “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

KITTY: Mike Crowley has the goods on Kelley. I think of her as a slightly less reliable National Enquirer. Which puts her one step above CBS News.

GET THE HANKIES OUT: Here’s a website devoted to poems about pet loss. Yep, the web has everything.

“Overall, I have many of the same lamentations about Big-Government-Bush as you, and as my views are generally libertarian I find much of the social conservatism distasteful as well. But while I was struggling with how to approach this election for those reasons, I must say that this unspeakably disgusting behavior by CBS has now made my decision easy. I always thought the clear liberal bias at CBS (and others) was just a natural consequence of the way the liberal journalists dominating MSM see the world rather than a concerted effort to push a liberal agenda (the fish don’t feel the water theory, as others have put it). I now see how wrong I was. If CBS is willing to not only shred even the pretense of journalistic ethics, but to actually conspire to commit fraud (as I think the evidence of ignoring experts and standing behind such obvious forgeries shows) in a desperate attempt to throw a presidential election and install their candidate, then I must do everything I can to oppose them. This means becoming an active supporter of President Bush. I would never have imagined that would happen, but all I can say is thanks, CBS, for exposing yourself and clearing things up.” More feedback on the Letters Page. By the way, I’m on Paula Zahn at 8pm wit Howie Kurtz discussing Rathergate.