Bernard Goldberg, author and former CBS employee, had disclosed a bombshell. It seems that besides having a fake letter as the backbone of its story, May Mapes knew that President George Bush volunteered to go to Vietnam.
Read that again.
George W. Bush volunteered to go to Vietnam. And Mapes knew it before running the 60 Minutes II story that cost her her job.
Until now, the controversy over the Rather/Mapes story has centered almost entirely on one issue: the legitimacy of the documents – a very important issue, indeed. But it turns out that there was another very important issue, one that goes to the very heart of what the story was about – and one that has gone virtually unnoticed. This is it: Mary Mapes knew before she put the story on the air that George W. Bush, the alleged slacker, had in fact volunteered to go to Vietnam.
Who says? The outside panel CBS brought into to get to the bottom of the so-called “Rathergate” mess says. I recently re-examined the panel’s report after a source, Deep Throat style, told me to “Go to page 130.” When I did, here’s the startling piece of information I found:
Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.” Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.
This information, despite the fact that it has been available since the CBS report came out four years ago, has remained a secret to almost everybody both in and out of the media — one lonely fact in a 234- page report loaded with thousands of facts, and overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the documents.
This really hits home to me, because I know people who watch these news shows and take what they say as near gospel. There is no time in their lives for critical thinking or individual research. They TRUST the media to tell them the unbiased truth.
And I have a hard time reaching them with stubborn things called facts.
This is also a great example of why more and more people are referring to the mainstream media as the “state run media.” This was done in order to defeat a sitting Republican president and replace him with a Democrat, one of their own. Now, you have a president that the media sold to the public as the Messiah of American politics, and he is failing.
Do you think they are doing more to sell his efforts as successful, or telling the truth of the matter?
While some feel the love affair between Obama and the media may be over, there will always be some (cough Krugman cough) who will take whatever fecal matter the administration creates, polish it up and try to sell it to the public as gold.
The most irritating part of the situation is there are folks out there who will never learn of this and will continue to drink glass after glass of Kool-Aid.
Hat Tip: Hot Air
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