September 21, 2004 - Now that management at CBS has concluded that Dan Rather and the crew at CBS News were "duped” into the Memogate scandal – yes I’m calling it a scandal – I have one question for the liberal left and the equally liberally biased media, do I get to call Dan Rather a liar?

It may seem a little harsh for people to go around calling poor Dan a liar; after all, he was fed bad information. It would seem just a bit unfair to call him a liar when he was simply acting in good faith, trusting those that surrounded him professionally, his "allies” as it were. In fact, the responsible thing to do would be to examine how information so absurd, documents so tainted, could end up being accepted as truthful. In an effort to learn from the mistakes made it would seem a wise thing to find out where the weakest link exists so the defective fact verification procedure might be corrected, never to happen again. I am sure that CBS News, the responsible news organization that it is, will do just that, right after they impale the scapegoat’s head onto the stake out in front of CBS News headquarters for all to see.

As the "golden chairs” at CBS finally come clean with the American public about the actualities of Memogate – and isn’t it time we stop attaching the suffix "gate” to every scandal that comes to pass? – I couldn’t help but make a parallel distinction between the CBS memo scandal and another scandal that took place not too long ago.

How is it that the liberal left and the mainstream media can so "introspectively” examine the "flawed process” at CBS News, a process that gave us pathetically forged documents designed to smear George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service, and then turn around and embrace those who call President Bush a "liar” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Aren’t the situations exactly the same? President Bush, the CIA, British Intelligence and even the United Nations were fed bad information on the capabilities of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs yet the president has been continuously called a liar because he trusted information given to him by organizations that were supposed to give him reliable information. What Mary Mapes is to Dan Rather, the CIA, British Intelligence and the information from the UN were to President Bush. Yet Dan Rather was "duped” and President Bush is a liar. There just seems to be a certain inequity about the difference.

This, however, is where the two "scandals” part ways when it comes to how they get reported in the "non-biased” mainstream news media.

While the alphabet networks and their bomb-throwing counterparts in the print media inundate us with every detail about CBS’s memo scandal it is interesting to see that information invalidating Terry McAuliffe’s claim that President Bush is a liar goes unreported. As we read, listen and watch we are bombarded with information about every detail of Bill Burkett’s disgruntled life. Meanwhile, it goes unreported – at least in the United States – that the Italian businessman who supplied the bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger admitted that he was in the pay of France. Hhmm…interesting.

The Telegraph, an British publication, reports that Rocco Martino – or "Giacomo” as he was known in the clandestine circles – admitted to Italian magistrates that he was commissioned by the French government to "produce and circulate” the documents used by the US and Britain in their case for removing Saddam Hussein from power. It is suggested by some Italian diplomats that, "by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade ‘yellowcake’ uranium from Niger, France was trying to ‘set up’ Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.” By any standards this would make Rocco Martino the equivalent to Bill Burkett, Dan Rather the equivalent to the CIA and the American people the equivalent to President Bush.

So, it would seem that we are at a philosophical crossroads. Do we continue to allow Terry McAuliffe and his McAulinistras to call President Bush a liar when he was fed bad information while we accept that Dan Rather was "duped?” Or do we demand an end to the deception, the double-standard, and chastise Terry and the boys for being so incredibly partisan as to use slanderous rhetoric when talking about the President of the United States while embracing those who would forge documents for personal and political gain, all in the name of acquiring power?

Through it all one thing is abundantly obvious. No matter who is reporting what, it is pretty clear who the liars are.


Agent Behind Fake Uranium Documents Worked for France – The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/19/wniger19.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/19/ixworld.html