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January 16, 2005

Blood Lust For Bush At CBS

Glenn Garvin on the hilarious CBS RaTHergate report:

The independent panel that investigated CBS News’ botched report on President Bush’s National Guard service spent an exhaustive four months on the job, interviewing 62 witnesses and reviewing thousands of pages of scripts, notes, e-mails, military records and press releases. Unfortunately, it seems to have neglected to read its own report — otherwise, it would never have concluded that political bias played no role in the fiasco.

The evidence that reporters and producers working for CBS desperately wanted to land a knockout punch on the president’s reelection campaign is right there in the panel’s own 224-page review of how the Bush story went so grotesquely wrong.

They wanted it so much that they ignored evidence that their story was wrong, not only in its details but also in its fundamental assumptions. They wanted it so much that they slandered anyone who challenged them and plotted a book deal for a key source. They wanted it so much that they lied on the air and in their press releases. And they wanted it so much that even now, when the story has been disproved as a tissue of fictions and falsehoods, they continue to insist it’s true.

The most stunning single disclosure in the report may be that Dan Rather told the panel his on-air apology for the Bush story last September was phony, a sop to his bosses. Rather told the panel that he believes in the story to this very day: “The facts are right on the money.”

Before Rather is allowed to report another story for CBS, his bosses need to ask him: What facts? The story was based on a lead source who later admitted he lied and documents that are forged. It had no facts — only the fervent wishes of a bunch of reporters intent on derailing Bush.

If Dan Rather still believes that the "facts are right on the money," then CBS should should take him off the air now. What is the point of waiting for a couple of months when he has lost the ability to bring credibility to anything he utters on the air?

(Hat tip: Little Green Footballs)

Posted at 07:17 PM Pacific