It is the third anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy…Three thousand innocent human beings were slaughtered by madmen that awful morning…today, over one thousand US soldiers have died in the _resident’s Mega-Mogadishu in Iraq, a foolish military adventure -- lawless, unnecessary, ill-planned, unwinnable and predicated on LIES -- that has not only drained vital resources away from the hunt for Osama and al Qaeda, but has swelled the ranks of their fighters, fractured the Western Alliance, set the Arab Street ablaze with hatred and contributed to a significant increase in terrorist activity throughout the world…Meanwhile, we have been plunged into hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal budget deficit, and we have lost four years we did not have to spare in the struggle against nuclear proliferation, Global Warming, AIDS in Africa and other serious threat to national and international security that we should be leading…But none of these woes are as dangerous or as despair-engendering as the utter complicity, cravenness and moral betrayal of the US regimestream news media, formerly known as the “US mainstream news media,” in particular, the major network news organizations and the opinion-shaping WASHPs and NYTwits…There are 52 days to go to our Day of Reckoning at the ballot box. Either there is an Electoral Uprising or we will lose this Republic in all but pretense.
Here are five important stories from what should be today’s headlines. Please read them and share them with others. Please vote on 11/2 and encourage others to vote. Please remember that the the US regimestream news media does not want to inform you, it wants to DISinform you. The US regimestream news media has lost claim to impartiality or real journalism, it is, indeed, sponsoring the Bush cabal and its wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly known-as-the-Republican-Party, and forms a Triad in the service of Corporate Interests (oil, weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.).
KATA KERTESZ, Associated Press: Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department official who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war, is urging government insiders to provide similar classified documents about the invasion of Iraq. Joined by other whistle-blowers and former government employees, Ellsberg said at a news conference Thursday that claims of government deception and lies have ``little credibility'' unless supported by documentary evidence, which often is available only in classified materials. In a memo to current government employees, Ellsberg and other former government officials said federal insiders owe a ``highhttp://www.progressivetrail.org/articles/040909Whitney.shtmler allegiance'' to the Constitution, the public and American soldiers in Iraq than to their government bosses.
The memo acknowledged that whistle-blowers risk personal setbacks, such as losing their jobs, but urged them to act nonetheless. ``You may save many Americans from being lied to death,'' it said.
Sibel Edmonds, who was fired by the FBI after she alleged security lapses in the agency's translator program, said the government frequently over-classifies documents, including the investigation into her own case.
Among the documents claimed to be wrongly classified are sections of reports from Army investigations into prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, and supporting material for then-Army Gen. Eric Shinseki's February 2003 estimate that several hundred thousand troops would have to stay in Iraq after the war.
Mike Whitney, Progessive Trail: Senator Bob Graham's new book, "Intelligence Matters" is a political tsunami. Along with many unexplored allegations concerning both 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan, Graham creates an important link between the Bush Administration and the attacks of Sept. 11.
This connection corroborates the suspicions of many Americans who have studied 9-11 and believe that the administration may have facilitated the attacks by suppressing FBI investigations of terrorist activity in the US.
So, far, Graham's allegations have remained largely unreported in the media and do not appear in the 9-11 Commission's report. They are none the less stunning.
Graham wrote that, "It was as if the president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety."
That assertion may be true, but it's not nearly as important as the larger allegation that the Bush Administration was actively involved in suppressing an FBI investigation into the actions of people directly responsible for 9-11.
Graham's book provides crucial evidence that the administration can be implicated in the greatest case of criminal negligence in the nation's history. His claims significantly reinforce the view that the Bush regime may have intentionally created the conditions for a massive terrorist attack to facilitate their ambition of a global war for the world's dwindling oil reserves.
It also suggests that the administration cannot afford to leave office according to the normal protocols. Future investigative panels would certainly uncover evidence that would only further detail the administration's level of involvement.
This casts a pall over the upcoming elections.
9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows: Our illegal, immoral and unjustified invasion of Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks, has cost the lives of 1,000 American troops and an estimated 12,000 Iraqi civilians, while leaving tens of thousands of others physically and emotionally traumatized. Today, our continuing occupation, our failure to provide basic services like electricity and water, and our torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has turned Iraq into a focus of anti-American sentiment where a new generation of terrorists is being recruited from around the world.
Is the source of our security and freedom the exercise of overwhelming military power? Have we found security and freedom by dividing the world into "us and them," and labeling entire nations "evil"? Three years ago, the French declared, "We are all Americans," and Iranians held spontaneous candlelight vigils for our dead. Today, American prestige is at an all-time low. Friend and foe alike tremble at the sense of exceptionalism that drives America to conduct pre-emptive war.
And what example have we set by our use of violence as a tool for addressing complex grievances? In the past week, heartbreaking pictures of children abducted and killed in Russia remind us that terrorism against civilian populations, which did not begin on September 11th, has not abated as a result of our actions since then. In Iraq, abductions of more than 40 civilians from nations including Japan, Jordan, Italy, China, Ukraine, South Korea, Egypt, Nepal, India, Kenya, the Philippines, Bulgaria and our own have escalated the level of human suffering.
Francie Latour, Michael Rezendes, Boston Globe: After CBS News trumpeted newly discovered documents Wednesday that referred to a 1973 effort to "sugar coat" President Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard, the network almost immediately faced charges that the memos were forgeries with typography that was not available on typewriters used at that time. But specialists interviewed by the Globe and some other news organizations say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format, were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s, when Bush was a first lieutenant. Philip Bouffard, a forensic document examiner in Ohio who has analyzed typewritten samples for 30 years, had expressed suspicions about the documents in an interview with the New York Times, one in a wave of similar media reports. But Bouffard told the Globe Friday that after further study, he now believed the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time.
David Brock, Media Matters: As new evidence emerges that President George W. Bush did not complete his Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard and that he benefited from his status as the son of a powerful, well-connected family in order to gain a coveted position in the Guard, members of the media have employed several defenses in an effort to refute that evidence. None of these defenses stand up to scrutiny.
FALSE DEFENSE #1: Bush received an honorable discharge
The principal response from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to criticism of President Bush's military service record has been to point out repeatedly that Bush received an honorable discharge from the National Guard. Though a February article (subscription required) in The New Republic debunked the idea that an honorable discharge necessarily demonstrates a fulfillment of one's service obligations (as Media Matters for America has noted), members of the media have nonetheless eagerly adopted this mantra:
FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly: "[H]e [President Bush] got an honorable discharge and he said he was proud of his service. You know, what's -- why bother with this?" [FOX News Channel, The O'Reilly Factor, 9/8/04]
CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer: "Here's the bottom line, though. The president did get an honorable discharge from the Air National Guard from his military service." [CNN, News from CNN, 9/8/04]
FOX News Channel and ABC Radio Networks host Sean Hannity: "[W]e do know in fact that he was honorably discharged and placed on inactive Ready Reserve." [FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, 9/8/04]
FOX News Channel host Steve Doocy: "Well, as the White House points out the president did receive an honorable discharge." [FOX News Channel, FOX & Friends, 9/9/04]
Moreover, CBS News recently obtained a memo from the personal files of Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, Bush's squadron commander during his time in the National Guard. According to the memo, Killian said he was pressured to "sugar coat" his evaluation of then-Lieutenant Bush.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat the Triad! Defeat Bush (again!)
Full text of these stories with URLs follow.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4484619,00.html
Ellsberg Urges Insiders to Leak Iraq Info
Thursday September 9, 2004 9:01 PM
By KATA KERTESZ
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department official who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war, is urging government insiders to provide similar classified documents about the invasion of Iraq.
Joined by other whistle-blowers and former government employees, Ellsberg said at a news conference Thursday that claims of government deception and lies have ``little credibility'' unless supported by documentary evidence, which often is available only in classified materials.
In a memo to current government employees, Ellsberg and other former government officials said federal insiders owe a ``highhttp://www.progressivetrail.org/articles/040909Whitney.shtmler allegiance'' to the Constitution, the public and American soldiers in Iraq than to their government bosses.
``A hundred forty-thousand Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq for dubious purpose,'' the memo said. ``Our country has urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials. Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.''
The memo acknowledged that whistle-blowers risk personal setbacks, such as losing their jobs, but urged them to act nonetheless. ``You may save many Americans from being lied to death,'' it said.
Sibel Edmonds, who was fired by the FBI after she alleged security lapses in the agency's translator program, said the government frequently over-classifies documents, including the investigation into her own case.
Among the documents claimed to be wrongly classified are sections of reports from Army investigations into prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, and supporting material for then-Army Gen. Eric Shinseki's February 2003 estimate that several hundred thousand troops would have to stay in Iraq after the war.
Ellsberg was a special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense during the Vietnam War. He released the 7,000 page classified study to the Senate and 19 newspapers in 1971 and now leads the Truth Telling Project.
^---
http://www.progressivetrail.org/articles/040909Whitney.shtml?mail=09
On the Net:
Truth Telling Project: www.truthtellingproject.org
'Intelligence Matters' Connecting Bush to 9-11
by Mike Whitney
published by Progressive Trail
'Intelligence Matters' Connecting Bush to 9-11
Senator Bob Graham's new book, "Intelligence Matters" is a political tsunami. Along with many unexplored allegations concerning both 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan, Graham creates an important link between the Bush Administration and the attacks of Sept. 11.
This connection corroborates the suspicions of many Americans who have studied 9-11 and believe that the administration may have facilitated the attacks by suppressing FBI investigations of terrorist activity in the US.
So, far, Graham's allegations have remained largely unreported in the media and do not appear in the 9-11 Commission's report. They are none the less stunning.
Graham's book asserts that a paid informer for the FBI had rented rooms in his San Diego home to two of the Saudi terrorists involved in the 9-11 atacks. The two Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, had been tracked into the US by the CIA, but the FBI maintains that they were not notified of their whereabouts. This, despite the fact that the aforementioned informer was charged with monitoring suspicious activity in the Saudi community and these men had ties to the Saudi government.
As Frank Davies in the Miama Herald reports, "the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi government."
"Al-Bayoumi received a monthly allowance from a contractor for Saudi Civil Aviation that jumped from $465 to $3,700 in March 2000, after he helped Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhdar -- two of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- find apartments and make contacts in San Diego, just before they began pilot training." (Herald)
Incredibly, when Graham tried to serve the FBI with a subpoena to produce the elusive "informer", (Abdussattar Shaikh) the FBI refused to accept the subpoena and balked at providing his location to the Senate investigating committee.
Graham writes that the FBI was blocked by the Bush Administration from either producing the informer or providing knowledge of his whereabouts.
Why?
Up to this point, many had concluded that the FBI was hiding information to conceal its own failings. That, however, does not explain why the administration would get involved.
Nor does it explain why both the Administration and the CIA have insisted that "details about the Saudi support network that benefited two hijackers be left out of the final congressional report."
According to Graham, Bush said that, "a nation-state that had aided the terrorists should not be held publicly to account." This, of course, is a dramatic departure from the fundamental tenet of the "Bush Doctrine"; that states are entirely responsible for terrorist
activity within their borders. This was the logic the drove the US to war with Afghanistan.
Graham wrote that, "It was as if the president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety."
That assertion may be true, but it's not nearly as important as the larger allegation that the Bush Administration was actively involved in suppressing an FBI investigation into the actions of people directly responsible for 9-11.
Graham's book provides crucial evidence that the administration can be implicated in the greatest case of criminal negligence in the nation's history. His claims significantly reinforce the view that the Bush regime may have intentionally created the conditions for a massive terrorist attack to facilitate their ambition of a global war for the world's dwindling oil reserves.
It also suggests that the administration cannot afford to leave office according to the normal protocols. Future investigative panels would certainly uncover evidence that would only further detail the administration's level of involvement.
This casts a pall over the upcoming elections.
What are these people capable of if it looks like they will lose an election that will lead to their criminal prosecution by the Justice Department?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091204Z.shtml
Three Years Later
9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Statement
Saturday 11 September 2004
Nearly three years ago, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows was born out of a shared belief that America's military response to the 9/11 attacks which took our loved ones' lives would result in the deaths of countless innocent civilians and increase recruitment for terrorist causes, making the United States, and the world, less safe and less free for generations to come.
Today, as we commemorate September 11, 2004, we find that our worst fears have been realized. The terrorism of September 11th has been neither neutralized, nor ended, by the terrorism of war.
Since our bombing and military action in Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of more than 130 American troops and an estimated 4,000 civilians - and compounded by our failure to rebuild that broken nation - we have seen the return of Taliban warlords, the departure of relief agencies, and the continuing deaths of American service people and innocent civilians. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has acknowledged that he is seeking the support of former Taliban officials in an effort to stabilize the political process. Osama bin Laden remains at large, and al-Qaeda remains a potent terrorist force, as evidenced by the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, Spain.
Our illegal, immoral and unjustified invasion of Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks, has cost the lives of 1,000 American troops and an estimated 12,000 Iraqi civilians, while leaving tens of thousands of others physically and emotionally traumatized. Today, our continuing occupation, our failure to provide basic services like electricity and water, and our torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has turned Iraq into a focus of anti-American sentiment where a new generation of terrorists is being recruited from around the world.
In Guantánamo, approximately 600 detainees from 40 countries remain incarcerated without charge and without access to lawyers. Those who have been returned to their home countries attest to conditions that violate the Geneva Conventions and our own democratic principles. In America, the USA Patriot Act gives government free reign to surveil law-abiding citizens. Restrictions on peaceful protest mock our Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and assembly. Meanwhile, bias crimes and discrimination continue to cast a shadow over our nation.
That all of this has been done in the names of our loved ones who died on September 11th makes the suffering of their innocent counterparts around the world even harder to take. When actions that are making the world less secure are carried out in the name of US security, we must reconsider the true sources of the security, freedom, and respect we once commanded around the globe.
Is the source of our security and freedom the exercise of overwhelming military power? Have we found security and freedom by dividing the world into "us and them," and labeling entire nations "evil"? Three years ago, the French declared, "We are all Americans," and Iranians held spontaneous candlelight vigils for our dead. Today, American prestige is at an all-time low. Friend and foe alike tremble at the sense of exceptionalism that drives America to conduct pre-emptive war.
And what example have we set by our use of violence as a tool for addressing complex grievances? In the past week, heartbreaking pictures of children abducted and killed in Russia remind us that terrorism against civilian populations, which did not begin on September 11th, has not abated as a result of our actions since then. In Iraq, abductions of more than 40 civilians from nations including Japan, Jordan, Italy, China, Ukraine, South Korea, Egypt, Nepal, India, Kenya, the Philippines, Bulgaria and our own have escalated the level of human suffering.
On September 11th, 2002, we urged America to participate fully in the global community, by honoring international treaties, endorsing and participating in the International Criminal Court, following the United Nations charter, and agreeing in word and action to the precepts of international law. Today, we redouble our call for America to return to full membership in the community of nations.
We call for an end to war as our nation's one blunt instrument of foreign policy in our increasingly complex world. We recognize that our freedoms and security derive not from politicians or the Pentagon, but from our Constitution, and call on all Americans to rise in its defense against the triple threats of fear, lies and ignorance.
Finally, we draw hope from those around the globe whose historical experiences of terrorism and war have brought them not to a place of vengeance, but to a commitment to creating a peaceful world. They include victims of the violence in Israel and Palestine; families of victims of the Bali nightclub bombing; family members of those killed in Oklahoma City; atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki; those who survived the bombing of Guernica, Spain and Dresden, Germany; those affected by terrorism in Kenya; Cambodia; Chechnya; South Africa; Northern Ireland; Bosnia; Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Through their witness and their efforts towards reconciliation, they have demonstrated that peace begins in the heart of every individual, and that people united have an unparalleled power to change the world.
Every day, we choose to create the world we want to live in, through our words and through our actions. Today, we reach out to others around the world who recognize that war is not the answer. Today, three years after September 11th, we continue to choose peace.
-September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/11/MNGO68NEKR1.DTL
Further scrutiny lessens doubts on Bush memos
Some skeptics now say IBM typewriter could have been used
- Francie Latour, Michael Rezendes, Boston Globe
Saturday, September 11, 2004
After CBS News trumpeted newly discovered documents Wednesday that referred to a 1973 effort to "sugar coat" President Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard, the network almost immediately faced charges that the memos were forgeries with typography that was not available on typewriters used at that time.
But specialists interviewed by the Globe and some other news organizations say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format, were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s, when Bush was a first lieutenant.
Philip Bouffard, a forensic document examiner in Ohio who has analyzed typewritten samples for 30 years, had expressed suspicions about the documents in an interview with the New York Times, one in a wave of similar media reports. But Bouffard told the Globe Friday that after further study, he now believed the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time.
Analysts who have examined the documents focus on several facets of their typography, among them the use of a curved apostrophe, a raised, or superscript, "th," and the proportional spacing between the characters -- spacing that varies with the width of the letters. In older typewriters, each letter was allotted the same space.
Those who doubt the documents say those typographical elements would not have been commonly available at the time of Bush's service. But such characters were common features on electric typewriters of that era, the Globe determined through interviews with specialists and examination of documents from the period. In fact, one such raised "th," used to describe a Guard unit, the 187th, appears in a document in Bush's official record the White House made public this year.
Meanwhile, "CBS Evening News" Friday night explained how it had sought to authenticate the documents, focusing primarily on its examiner's conclusion that two of the records were signed by Bush's guard commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. CBS also said other sources -- among Killian's friends and colleagues -- verified that the content of the documents reflected Killian's views at the time.
One of them, Robert Strong, a Guard colleague, said the language in the documents was "compatible with the way business was done at that time. They are compatible with the man I remember Jerry Killian being."
But William Flynn, a Phoenix document examiner cited in a Washington Post report Friday, said he had not changed his mind because he did not believe that the proportional spacing between characters, and between lines, in the documents obtained by CBS was possible on typewriters used by the military at the time.
Flynn said his doubts were also based on his belief that the curved apostrophe was not available on electric typewriters at the time, although documents from the period reviewed by the Globe show it was. He acknowledged that the quality of the copies of the documents he examined was poor.
The controversy over the authenticity of the documents has all but blocked out discussion of their content. They say Killian was under pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's record, and Bush refused a direct order to take a required medical examination and discussed how he could skip drills.
Bouffard, the Ohio document specialist, said that he had first dismissed the Bush documents because the letters and formatting of the memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his database. But Friday, Bouffard said that he had not considered the IBM Selectric Composer. Once he compared the memos to Selectric Composer samples, Bouffard said, his view shifted.
In the Times interview, Bouffard had also questioned whether the military would have used the Composer, a large machine. But Friday he provided a document indicating that as early as April 1969 the Air Force had completed service testing for the Composer, possibly in preparation for purchasing the typewriters.
As for the raised "th" that appears in the Bush memos, Bouffard said that custom characters on the Composer's metal typehead ball were available in the 1970s.
"You can't just say that this is definitively the mark of a computer," Bouffard said.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200409100005
Cable, radio hosts pushed bogus defenses of Bush's Guard service
As new evidence emerges that President George W. Bush did not complete his Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard and that he benefited from his status as the son of a powerful, well-connected family in order to gain a coveted position in the Guard, members of the media have employed several defenses in an effort to refute that evidence. None of these defenses stand up to scrutiny.
FALSE DEFENSE #1: Bush received an honorable discharge
The principal response from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to criticism of President Bush's military service record has been to point out repeatedly that Bush received an honorable discharge from the National Guard. Though a February article (subscription required) in The New Republic debunked the idea that an honorable discharge necessarily demonstrates a fulfillment of one's service obligations (as Media Matters for America has noted), members of the media have nonetheless eagerly adopted this mantra:
• FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly: "[H]e [President Bush] got an honorable discharge and he said he was proud of his service. You know, what's -- why bother with this?" [FOX News Channel, The O'Reilly Factor, 9/8/04]
• CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer: "Here's the bottom line, though. The president did get an honorable discharge from the Air National Guard from his military service." [CNN, News from CNN, 9/8/04]
• FOX News Channel and ABC Radio Networks host Sean Hannity: "[W]e do know in fact that he was honorably discharged and placed on inactive Ready Reserve." [FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, 9/8/04]
• FOX News Channel host Steve Doocy: "Well, as the White House points out the president did receive an honorable discharge." [FOX News Channel, FOX & Friends, 9/9/04]
Moreover, CBS News recently obtained a memo from the personal files of Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, Bush's squadron commander during his time in the National Guard. According to the memo, Killian said he was pressured to "sugar coat" his evaluation of then-Lieutenant Bush.
FALSE DEFENSE #2: Ben Barnes is a liar
On the September 8 broadcast of CBS's 60 Minutes, former Texas House speaker and Lt. Governor Ben Barnes told anchor Dan Rather that as House speaker in 1968, he recommended Bush for the Guard to his "longtime friend" Brigadier General James Rose, the head of the Texas Air National Guard. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, a September 7 memo to GOP leaders by Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie sought to portray Barnes as an unreliable witness, claiming falsely that Barnes' recent statements contradict sworn testimony in 1999 in which Barnes said he had not acted at the behest of the Bush family. Conservative reporters and commentators have repeated this false claim:
• Radio host Rush Limbaugh: Under oath, Ben Barnes testified that he had no contact with the Bush family concerning the National Guard. Changing his story now, claiming he was paid off and pressured by the Bush family via a surrogate to keep quiet. [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 9/8/04]
• Sean Hannity: Here's this guy, Barnes, who is now saying basically that he, uh, gave favorable treatment to the President back -- back in the Vietnam days. That's what he's saying. OK. Well, under oath in 1999, he testified he had no contact with the Bush family concerning the National Guard. He was the Speaker of the Texas House in 1999 and he said at the time that, uh, he had spoken to the head of the Texas National Guard on President Bush's behalf. He had not had any contact with anyone in the Bush family. But now he's saying something different. [ABC Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 9/8/04]
• Jim Angle, FOX News Channel White House correspondent, repeated misleading White House claims without challenge:
ANGLE: A former prominent Texas politician will be on 60 Minutes tonight, making charges he first made in 1999 and repeated several months ago to a group of volunteers called Austin for Kerry.
[clip of Barnes]
The White House says Barnes's charges are not only recycled, but that Barnes himself has previously said no one in the Bush family asked him for help.
In fact, Barnes has been entirely consistent on this issue. He said the same thing in 1999 and on 60 Minutes: that he called Rose at the behest of Houston oilman Sidney A. Adger, a friend of the Bush family who is now dead.
FALSE DEFENSE #3: Bush wasn't obligated to serve in Boston
On September 8, The Boston Globe discovered a document Bush signed on July 30, 1973, that stated, ''It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months." Bush never located a Boston-area unit, as the Globe explained. On FOX News Channel, Angle and anchor Brit Hume (FOX News Channel managing editor and chief Washington correspondent) uncritically accepted White House communications director Dan Bartlett's insistence that despite Bush's signed pledge, a subsequent "special order" by the Guard's Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver placing Bush on inactive Ready Reserve somehow released Bush from his obligation to fulfill the remainder of his service. But Bartlett's explanation is controversial at best, given that the military expert who examined Bush's records for the Globe saw all the relevant documents and reached the opposite conclusion:
• Brit Hume: A new ad promoted to the media by the Kerry camp accuses George Bush of skipping National Guard duty. But a Boston Globe accusation on that appears to be false.
[...]
The Bush camp has now produced, or at least called attention to, records that presumably the Globe had access to that [indicate] Bush had, in fact, got a discharge from his duties at that time, and was not required to have any. [FOX News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, 9/8/04]
• Jim Angle: Official documents show that Bush did request an early out to go to graduate school in September of 1973, which was granted. He was honorably discharged from active reserve and placed on inactive Ready Reserve, meaning he could have been called up if needed.
Dan Bartlett: [clip] They knew where to locate him. And that was the obligation he had. And that's the obligation he fulfilled. [FOX News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, 9/8/04]
The issue raised by the Globe story was not whether the Guard "knew where to locate" Bush. Rather, as a September 8 article in U.S. News & World Report -- which relied on the same expert analysis of Bush's records by retired Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter -- makes clear, Bush signed the document committing to "continue his service in Boston" because he had not completed enough drills to fulfill his original six-year service obligation.
FALSE DEFENSE #4: "Another commander" said Bush served in Alabama
According to examinations by news organizations including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report, and CBS News, available records provide no evidence to support White House claims that Bush served temporary duty with the Alabama Guard beginning in the fall of 1972. A new ad by the anti-Bush group Texans for Truth shows Retired Lieutenant Colonel Bob Mintz -- who served in Bush's unit, the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group of the Alabama Air National Guard, from 1967 to 1984 -- insisting that he does not remember ever seeing Bush. As these questions resurfaced, Bush's defenders again pointed to Retired Lieutenant Colonel John B. "Bill" Calhoun, who claims he served alongside Bush at Alabama's Dannelly Air National Guard Base. But Calhoun has been discredited; as The Washington Post noted (and as MMFA has pointed out), Calhoun claims to remember seeing Bush between May and October 1972, though the White House itself acknowledges Bush did not begin performing drills in Alabama until October. But FOX News Channel viewers were not told of the doubts about Calhoun's veracity:
• Sean Hannity: And we have another former commander in the unit who has testified that President Bush was there. [FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, 9/8/04]
• Jim Angle: [A] former commander has said he was there and worked out of his office. [FOX News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, 9/8/04]
Though neither mentioned Calhoun by name, MMFA found no record of any other former commander of the 187th who has memories of Bush serving in Alabama. On the September 9 Special Report, Angle cited Calhoun explicitly:
ANGLE: But a man who says he served with him in Alabama told Hannity & Colmes ... there is no question that Mr. Bush served there [in Alabama].
CALHOUN: [clip from FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes] Since then, there have been five or six that have come forward and they did see him. I would give more credence to the people that saw him, than people that said they didn't see him.
On September 10, Salon.com's Eric Boelhert pointed out that in addition to FOX, Calhoun was also embraced by ABC News, CNN and the Associated Press as a source for reports on Bush's Guard service.
FALSE DEFENSE #5: Bush did not invite scrutiny of his military service, unlike Kerry
Commentators on FOX News Channel repeatedly insisted that Bush didn't deserve attacks on his military service record, unlike Kerry, who they claim invited the widely discredited attacks on his Vietnam service by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on himself by touting his service as an important credential qualifying him to be president. (MMFA has previously documented the use of this dubious argument on FOX News Channel.)
• Brit Hume: But there are another distinctions [sic] that might be made -- and seems to me should be made -- is that John Kerry has made his Vietnam behavior made his Vietnam era behavior a centerpiece of his campaign, something the president has hardly done. He has never said boo about it. Other than when asked, he said, "I served. I got an honorable discharge. I did my -- did my -- did what I was supposed to do." Beyond that, he never wanted to talk about it.
Mara Liasson (National Public Radio national political correspondent and FOX News Channel contributor): There's no doubt. No doubt. [FOX News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, 9/8]
• FOX News Channel host Brian Kilmeade: Did the president get up on his podium that was made just for his presentation and say reporting for duty? No, he's not running on that record, he's running on being governor and being president for the last four years. But in some people's mind, I guess, it's equal. [FOX News Channel, FOX & Friends, 9/9/04]
But as MMFA has previously noted, even before this election cycle, Bush attempted to use his military record to bolster campaigns for public office, including for president in 2000. During his 1978 congressional campaign, he circulated campaign literature falsely claiming he had served in the Air Force. During his 1978 congressional campaign, he falsely claimed he had served in the Air Force, and when questioned about that claim in July 1999, as Salon.com's Boehlert reported in a February 5 article, "Bush's then-spokeswoman Karen Hughes told the Associated Press it was accurate for Bush to suggest, as he'd done in a previous campaign, that he served "in the U.S. Air Force," when in fact he served in the Air National Guard." Bush also lied about his military record in his 1999 autobiography about how long he flew jets for the Guard. These lies have gone virtually unreported by the media.
And while "[f]ormer President George H. W. Bush has attacked those who have questioned President George W. Bush's service record during the Vietnam War," the Center for American Progress noted, "it was George H. W. Bush who orchestrated a similar attack on his opponents in 1988." The elder Bush's campaign co-chairman, John Sununu, accused Senator Lloyd Bentsen (the vice presidential candidate running with Bush's opponent, Michael Dukakis) of "helping his son get into the National Guard."
— J.C. & G.W.
Posted to the web on Friday September 10, 2004 at 12:34 PM EST
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