Dear Bill Moyers, on "Buying the War"

...as opposed to "selling" the war.

You seem to "think" our main stream media was gullible. That seems to be the point of your program tonight on PBS.

I think many in the MSM were complicit.

(Probably paid off in one way or the other.
Elite, Privileged Americans, especially in D.C., are such brazen whores.)

President Bush freely has spoken of his role as a "propaganda catapult" so I don't think I'm spilling any beans here, neither am I a Conspiracy Theorist, as the folks on National Propaganda Radio used to say repeatedly, as if by mantra.

As a flyover midwestern housefrau who reads, I was aware of the avowed goals of the PNAC Neocons, the boldfaced lies of Colin Powell, Condoleeeza, Rumsey, Dick Cheney, and Dubya, Judith Miller's lying and the discrepancy between the front page and the interior pages of the New York Times, the influence of media ownership on reporting and editorial content, the idiocy of the pundits, the truth of Scott Ritter's, and Hans Blix' and Ray McGovern's professional testimony, and the odd juxtaposition of your pal, Dan Rather's complicity in the Bush National Guard records papers fiasco with his part in the Niger yellowcake paper's scandal.

Do you remember how "boldly" Dan Rather revealed those phony papers - obviously fraudulent - and then the War Party administration... as if scripted for a serial weekly television show ... was able to say the LIBRUL MEDIA was phonying up papers to smear the noble Bush, and thus they got a free ride on the truly phony Niger papers?

This is from Media Matters, to jog your memory...

"Power Line's Johnson falsely claimed CBS panel found Bush Air National Guard documents were forged"
On the November 13 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, Scott Johnson, a fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute and a contributor to the right-wing weblog Power Line, falsely claimed that the independent panel hired by CBS to investigate the reporting of a September 8, 2004, 60 Minutes Wednesday segment questioning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service found that documents cited in the 60 Minutes Wednesday story were forgeries. But contrary to Johnson's assertion, the independent panel's report reached no conclusion as to whether the documents were forged.

Johnson appeared on Reliable Sources opposite Eric Boehlert, a former senior writer at the online magazine Salon and a contributor to The Huffington Post website. During the segment, Boehlert asked rhetorically, "[I]f the documents [upon which the 60 Minutes Wednesday segment was based] were forgery [sic], why didn't Republican Richard Thornburgh [co-chairman of the panel investigating the 60 Minutes Wednesday segment] make that conclusion in his report? He couldn't. And he wouldn't." Johnson responded, "It's on Page 175 [of the report]."

In fact, Page 175 of the independent panel report contains no conclusions about the authenticity of the documents. Page 175 contains the panel's assessment of testimony provided by typography expert Peter Tytell (whose testimony Johnson cited during the Reliable Sources segment). The report states that the panel "found [Tytell's] analysis sound in terms of why he believed the documents were not authentic," but adds, "[t]he [p]anel reaches no conclusion as to whether Tytell was correct in all respects." Moreover, in its executive summary, the report states that although the panel "identified a number of issues that raise serious questions about the authenticity of the documents and their content," it "has not been able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the ... documents are authentic or forgeries."

In the executive summary, the report states that the September 8, 2004, 60 Minutes Wednesday story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service "failed to meet" CBS' standards of "accuracy and fairness." The panel found that "with better reporting ... questions [about the authenticity of the documents] should have been raised before the September 8 [s]egment aired." The panel's report, made public on January 10, prompted the ouster of four CBS News employees, including Mary Mapes, the producer of the faulted segment, who also appeared on the November 13 edition of Reliable Sources. CBS News' Dan Rather, who reported the 60 Minutes Wednesday segment on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, also announced his retirement as anchor of CBS' Evening News November 23, 2004, following the flap over the story. Rather claimed he made the decision to resign during the summer of 2004, and he continued to host the Evening News until March 9, 2005.

From the November 23 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources:

JOHNSON: Well, I just go back to the fact that the substance of the story was a hoax without those documents, which were absolutely forgeries. Look at -- look at the Thornburgh report has the testimony of Peter Tytell, who indicates that this Times New Roman type that those four documents were prepared in didn't exist on typewriters. And he concludes that those were word-processed documents.

HOWARD KURTZ (host): Right.

JOHNSON: Without the documents, there was no story.

KURTZ: In fairness, there were different experts, although many experts do agree with the expert hired by the commission. But you just used the word "hoax." That's a very strong word, because that suggests that CBS and Mary Mapes and Dan Rather did this deliberately, as opposed to perhaps not being careful enough. Do you believe they actually tried to mislead viewers?

JOHNSON: Well, all I would say is the evidence in the report of coordination with the Kerry campaign is substantial. But I will say, now, for Mary Mapes to come on this show this morning and reiterate these fraudulent charges, is a hoax, is a deliberate fraud. Whatever was the status of the story on September 8, 2004, in November 2005, it is a knowing fraud.

KURTZ: Eric Boehlert, you've got the last 20 seconds.

BOEHLERT: Well, that's the problem with this. You know, I think the bloggers got -- hit a home run with this, and their arrogance is now out of control. They're saying the whole Bush National Guard story is a joke. And if the documents were forgery [sic], why didn't Republican Richard Thornburgh make that conclusion in his report? He couldn't. And he wouldn't.

KURTZ: All right.

JOHNSON: It's on Page 175.

Now Bill, Juxtapose that report with this, from Jefferson Morley, in the WaPost:

The Niger Papers: Obstacles to Coverage
Could a media scandal from the 2004 election wind up hindering a major U.S. media organization from following up on the Bush administration's alleged use of forged documents to justify the Iraq war?
The Los Angeles Times is one of several U.S. papers to pick up on the La Repubblica series, focusing on the travails of Elizabeth Burba, the writer for the Italian weekly Panorama who was one of the first journalists to receive the bogus papers on Iraq's alleged attempts to acquire nuclear materials in Africa.Burba told the LAT "she wanted to press ahead with efforts to investigate the case further and determine who forged the documents, but her magazine never published any additional reports."
Panorama is owned by the family of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The Italian leader was a strong supporter of the U.S. effort to topple Saddam Hussein.
Burba "has also been interviewed by the CBS investigative show '60 Minutes' for a piece on the documents that was pulled in the wake of the problems that brought down Dan Rather," according to the LAT.
But after suffering a major black eye last year for relying on forged documents for a story about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS would risk controversy if it aired a story about how the Bush administration allegedly relied on doctored intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. CBS's coverage would seem to be handcuffed, at least temporarily, by Rather's 2004 election mistake.

So Bill, Bill, Bill, I must ask you. Why did you feature Dan Rather so prominently now, in 2007, in this package, "Buying the War" that you are selling as a fundraiser for PBS? Are we fogging history in order to rewrite it? Are we packaging the truth for insertion in the Memory Hole?

Dan Rather was a schill who helped Dubya get re-elected and helped him lead us to war.

I, a nobody, knew Dan Rather personally shared a Western ranch property with his personal pal Don Rumsfield. Didn't it occur to you that when Dan Rather brought out the obviously phony documents that he was playing the crucial role that he was groomed for all these years? Why bring that dirty mole back out of the wormy woodwork?
I learned in the nursery that birds of a feather flock together.
Let Dan Rather rot on Rumsey's Ranch.
I mix metphors when I'm mad. Deal with it.

Post script... and now Charley Rose is interviewing the fabulist Robert Novak, telling twisted tales from his bent perspective.
Hope dies last. PBS has drunk the Koolaide.