Posted 6:25 PM by Scoobie Davis

The CBS Fiasco
I have been working on the real news of the CBS controversy but it's too big. I don't know where to start. Accordingly, this will be a relatively short post because my view is that it's better to have an imcomplete article than one that never sees the light of day because it's in rough draft form(that happens all-too-often for me). Here is why I find the CBS/forged letters story so disheartening:

1.The pajama guys (right-wing bloggers) who were a part of this have no interest in journalistic integrity. It was a political ploy pure and simple. The same people so concerned about CBS's journalistic integrity appear on Fox News--a political operation which sytematically flouts journalistic standards. These same people don't give a damn if Fox News punks lie about John Kerry. These are the same people who give credence to the serial smears of the Swift Boat Veterans (I pointed out a while back how Power Line Blog, one of the main blogs behind the attempt to discredit the memos, acted as if the the Swift Vets were reliable sources. The opposite is true. Just one refutation out of dozens, today's Howler reports new John O'Neil's lies.

2. The whole issue obscures recent developments that show that Bush 1) was pro-Vietnam War--as long as kids from Watts or South Boston were the ones to become cannon fodder ; accordingly, 2) Bush family members used their pull to push Bush to the front of the Texas Air National Guard waiting line; 2) Once Bush got in, he didn't fufill his Texas Air National Guard duties; and 4) he's been lying about it ever since.