Guard service. The fact that Limbaugh assumes his listeners know who Burkett is demonstrates just how crucially important Rather 's disgrace was for the right.
Bill Burkett is also the guy who was telling the world that if anyone else had done what Bush did back then, failing to take an annual physical, leaving with permission, unilaterally terminating active duty, they would 've been shipped straight to the front lines in Vietnam. The charge of forgery disgraced Burkett and shut him up just as much as it did Rather, and discredited his other, more essential claim: that Bush is a liar and a coward. It allowed just the kind of nick-of-time change of subject that Karl Rove is famous for, while fortuitously reinforcing their bogus grievances against the liberal media and their reputation for swift, deep retribution. James
Moore, co-author of Bush 's Brain:
Frankly, from now on, I think in any political campaign for some time to come, when documents surface, people are immediately going to say, "Oh, it 's not one of those National Guard things, is it? " Because Bill Burkett has been discredited and his story has now been discredited. If this were a political tactic or strategy employed by Rove or by Republican operatives, it 's worked quite well.
. . . people have often said of me, and any number of other people who watched Karl Rove for years, that we give him credit for more than he deserves; but I, like any other political reporter who 's been around for twenty or thirty years, knows talent when they see it. I have watched Rove closely for over twenty years, almost twenty-five years. And he 's the best there is. He 's the best there ever has been at political skullduggery . . .
I mean, just imagine if, at this moment, the President were being called something worse than chickenhawk by all those
liberals in the fourth estate. Gold Star mom down there at the gate. Other moms coming. Wouldn 't want to be called a deserter.
could not determine that they were forgeries.
Some in the media are disparaging Cindy Sheehan 's breakthrough into national consciousness as the liberal counterpart of the Terri Schiavo media circus, but the true comparison is with Valeria Plame. Both Sheehan and Plame are proving hard to spin, because they are private citizens who have been wronged but are nevertheless being subjected to the same merciless, lying smear campaigns we accept as normal when used against other politicians.
If the outing of Plame for political purposes was, as Cohen said, just a crappy little crime -- if it was a crime -- then what would you call the outing of the ONLY al Qaeda double agent we have ever had? Although it received almost no press, last year shortly after the Democratic National Convention, the Bushitters leaked the name of Naeem Noor Kahn -- on background, Condi explained; is she really that dumb? --because Bush needed to show some results on terror in order to contain Kerry 's bounce.
At the time his cover was blown, Noor Khan had been turned and was working with the Pakistani intelligence service and the CIA. He had contacts in al Qaeda cells in London. Had Noor Khan stayed in place we would have had a fighting chance to prevent the London bombings. The sheer indifference of the act, the throwing away of such a literally priceless asset, is breathtaking. Predictably, there has been almost no media coverage of this outing -- either at the time in 2004, or now, when it is again relevant because of the recent bombings in London.
Given this administration 's proven vindictiveness toward anyone who challenges its rigid agenda, it may be that we 're lucky that Cindy Sheehan has been called away. This is an opportunity for others to step into her spotlight and demand that we be seen as a movement -- quick before the media shuts the lights off.
This IS a movement.
Patricia Goldsmith is a member of Long Island Media Watch, a grassroots free media and democracy watchdog group. She can be reached at:plgoldsmith@optonline.net.
1 | 2
