Bush was no "badass" pilot-He backed away after screwing up-Interestingly, he couldn't land a plane

eom

The article is great for knitting it all together in one place, but it only confirms that everything was true, almost all of which we already knew - the AWOL, the cocaine, the getting of Dan RATHER. Details added are few but eye catching, John SHARP's involment, here and there. The best thing is that the publication of this now makes it clear that it won't ever go away from Shrub.

Shrub probably has a secret vault, where he keeps Saddam's sword which he breaks out when he puts on a cape nekkid and swings it around. But most of all, there's probably a ghostwritten manuscript of his REAL accomplishments: Getting revenge on his and the B.F.E.E.'s enemies: Saddam (for Poppy); but also for himself revenge on Poppy and Jeb; Dan; and many others we don't even know about. Iraq and other things were just a family cartel thing.

In another country that would have qualified him as a suicide bomber.

Here we make him a president.

Because they are the ones who selected him as President. 'We' didn't make him president.

How possible would it be to fund (at a National level) ONE reporter at every network or metropolitan newspaper whose job it is to JUST do investigative journalism on whatever story they think is important, and have them be immune from allegations of political bias, because their work is PUBLICLY funded with taxpayer dollars...(I know that's what PBS kinda sometimes gets to do with Frontline, but imagine a person (or a team like that) at every broadcast network, only they work for US, not the network, and the quality of what they do would be judged by the assessment of their peers, almost like Scientific research for Journalists...
The reason I think this is because like good Science, quality Journalism would be worth 10 times what we would end up paying for it...

Possible, or Pipe-dream?

Thanks for posting this!

an explosive new fact that bolsters the theory that the Bush White House was well aware that the documents were forgeries hours before the story aired, but let CBS swallow the hook. The White House plotted to get Dan Rather and they succeeded.

From the Texas monthly piece:

"The morning before the broadcast was scheduled to air, CBS showed the memos to the White House for a response. Dan Bartlett was the network’s contact. Before Bartlett was interviewed, he emailed copies of the memos to Albert Lloyd, Bush’s longtime National Guard expert. In an interview in 2008, Lloyd told me he immediately recognized them as forgeries: “I looked at them and I said, ‘Don’t do a damned thing with these, because these are fake.’  Bartlett, however, appears to have ignored Lloyd’s assessment."

Bartlett possessed the documents by 7AM the morning before the story aired. After the story blew up, Bartlett was quoted in at least one newspaper saying that he showed the documents to Bush that morning and Bush said some of what was in the documents was true but that he had never been ordered to take a physical. I can't find links to any of those articles, probably because they no longer exist. But I do have:

"He also disclosed that he had shown the documents that morning to President Bush. "He had no recollection of these specific documents," Bartlett said, though the president said some of the information seemed accurate. For instance, he did go to Alabama. But he denied having defied orders from his superiors, Bartlett said."

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/sep/18/nation/na-cbs18

If Bartlett knew that events in the documents never really happened, he must have known the documents were forgeries. For example, if someone claimed to have a fan letter written by Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lindsay Lohan, it wouldn't take a document expert to instantly realize the letter was a forgery. Likewise, Bartlett must have known instantly.

Bartlett was interviewed by CBS before the story and never let on anything about the possibility that the documents were forgeries.

What is even more incriminating from the TexasMonthly piece is:

"Bartlett told me that the online attacks began “before I started any outreach” to the press. He added that Bush himself didn't learn of the Killian memos until after the segment had already aired, because Bartlett felt the documents didn't show anything revelatory. He initially dismissed them as “old news.”

So Bartlett has completely changed his story since its been realized that Bartlett must have known the memos were forgeries. Bartlett now says he didn't discuss the documents with Bush at all in advance.

One more bit of evidence that the White House knew in advance the documents were forgeries, the USA today timeline of events. The Bush/Guard story aired at 8:00 on September 8th, 2004. By 9:30 the same evening, the White House had E-mailed copies of the documents to editors and reporters all over the country. Reports at the time said 500 copies went out. If the White House thought that the documents were incriminating, why would they send them out? They must have known what was coming, and that they could make the whole story backfire on CBS. The White House must have started discussing releasing the documents before 9:30, probably for some time considering the size of the risk. So the White House knew well before doubts about the authenticity of the documents gained steam on the blogs.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-guard-scoops-skepticism_x.htm

One person who agrees with the theory that the White House let Rather swallow the hook on the guard story is Albert Lloyd, quoted in the TexasMonthly article:

"When I asked Lloyd why Bartlett ignored his assessment, he said, “I guess he was trying to set Rather up for getting mauled.”

Those old-timers who were members of salon.com's Table Talk message boards had the AWOL story down prior to the Boston Globe printing it.

An IOWA pig farmer who was a Table Talk member had requested copies of Bush's TANG records, and received them. Citizen-researchers in a group worked on the puzzle. We discovered the discrepancies and parsed out the story. Bush had gone AWOL from his post of duty in wartime.

Members of that Table Talk group spent massive effort trying to get the national press to break this story. Hundreds of phone calls, e-mails, personal visits were made to try to get the MSM to report that George W. Bush had been AWOL and the proof was available. We could never break through the curtain. It was heartbreaking.

Finally the Boston Globe printed a story.

On the Friday before the election, Senator Bob Kerrey snapped to the import of this story. The Republican candidate for president had gone AWOL in wartime. Kerrey called a press conference to ask George W. Bush to explain his military record.

Before the press conference could be held, an obscure FOX affiliate broke a story about an old DUI in Maine -- a Bush DUI. I will always believe that Karl Rove had that story in his pocket, and pulled it at just the right moment.

The Kerrey press conference about Bush AWOL was blown out of the news by the Bush DUI story. Convenient.

The new details in this Texas Monthly story are interesting.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004/02/awol-next-question-please.html

The name of the Table Talk citizen journalist who got the FOIA documents in 2000 is Marty Heldt. A true patriot. An Iowa farmer.

Another part missing from the Texas Monthly story is the "torn document" that Bush offered as proof of his story.

From Niewert:

It's also tempting to chastize the press for its behavior. Why, we're all wondering, wasn't this story properly explored in 2000? Because every reporter in the country (even Walter Robinson, it must be noted) was too busy flogging the "Gore is a liar, Bush is a straight shooter" script we were all handed.

I have to mention that I tried my damnedest to bring this story to the attention of my editors and colleagues at MSNBC.com while I was there the summer of 2000, and later (after I'd left the newsroom) that fall, as well. The interest, sadly, just wasn't there.

Bob Somerby pointed out yesterday (and explores even further today, by way of pointing out the flaws in Josh Marshall's otherwise superb summary of the matter) that even the latest examinations of the matter are falling rather short.

As Somerby observes, the problem with Romano's story is that it omits any discussion of the supposed "exculpatory" evidence offered by Team Bush in 2000 that supposedly demonstrated that Bush had put in duty in November 1972 -- namely, the torn document that doesn't even have Bush's name on it.

Somerby put it this way:

But note the problem with Romano's account. Clearly, the Post has decided to ignore the torn document. But Romano doesn't even mention the document's existence -- and she doesn't say why the Post has decided to disregard it. Has the Post decided the doc is a fake? If so, that means that the Bush campaign has been peddling a fraud for the past four years. Or has the Post decided that the document is too ambiguous to be trusted? In that case, shouldn't the Post at least tell readers that the famous torn document exists?

In today's post, he carries the point to the next logical step:

Meanwhile, let's pause to note an obvious point: If the "torn document" turns out to be fake, this story becomes much more serious. Indeed, if the "torn document" turns out to be bogus, this story becomes quite an A-bomb. This may be why papers are tiptoe-ing hard ...

... Can we offer one final thought about the way this tale has been covered? Let's go back to that puzzling "torn document." Clearly, the Post has refused to credit the doc; today, the Times seems to back away in its vagueness. But if the famous torn document is judged invalid, an awkward fact is thereby created -- it means that the Bush campaign, for the past four years, has been peddling a military document that is phony. Our guess would be that none of these papers wants to step into that ugly mire. Our guess? Both these papers are hiding behind desks, hoping this story expires.

It's especially worth observing that this torn document was not provided to the Post in 1999 in response to its FOIA requests for Bush's military records -- but it was given to the Boston Globe in 2000, as well as to Iowa citizen farmer/public hero Marty Heldt, whose dogged legwork in the case has been largely responsible for keeping the story alive all these years. (Here is the complete set of documents compiled by Marty: The Military Records of George W. Bush.)

Indeed, Marty -- who posted much of the material at Salon's Table Talk forum beginning in 1999, which is where I first encountered the information -- had this to say today in TT:

The papers don't want to face the fact that the documents Bush uses to defend his Guard record are the documents his campaign had placed into the record.

How can that be ignored by journalists?

I keep going back to what we have here with Lloyd because I find it truly remarkable that this old acquaintance of Bush is first the currator and then the discoverer of the very documents that Bush uses to defend his record.

It's time that somebody calls it what it is, a coverup.

Eventually, they may get around to that. It depends on how long the Bush folks insist on trying to ignore the press' questions -- particularly the most germane one raised so far, namely: "Why doesn't Bush release his military records like every other presidential candidate?"

Q: How did Bush know when he made a wheels-up landing?

A: It took full power to taxi.




I crack myself up.

"Couldn't land a plane" pretty much sums up everything about George W. Bush...

The critical point is that this unapologetic warmonger supported sending other mothers' sons and daughters to war while he acted to ensure that his skin would never be in the game.

For those of us who served, and fought, and sacrificed--and sacrifice still--we don't see that mutherfucker as being worthy of sharing our foxhole, or or the foxholes of those we loved and lost...FUCK HIM!!!

he took pay for duty that he didn't pull.

on his TANG documents he checked a box stating that he did not desire overseas duty. I guess it's possible the dumb mother-fucker thought VietNam was somewhere between Fort Worth and Waco, but I kind of doubt it.
As you said pinboy3niner ... FUCK HIM!

"During the period of GWB’s ’missing year’ Sergeants Dale Brandenburg, Peter Cressman, Joseph Matejov and Todd Melton disapppeared as MIA’s on February 5, 1973, over the Ho Chi Minh Trail along the Laos-Vietnam border. It’s ironic that we now know more about the fate half a world away to this ill fated EC-47Q recon flight with its 6994th Security Squadron members and four other personnel of the 361st Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron! Surely someone must know the reality of a future President’s whereabouts?"

very likely a poor boy of color. I spent a lot of time trying to ID which KIA was likely to have been the one who went in George's place. It might have been the kid from Midland area who was killed in a rice paddy his first day in country.

big K&R

Where is Dan Bartlett these days?