News and Views

Mary Mapes is still hyping her forgeries as genuine documents, and people who know better are still responding by pointing out the many flaws.
Powerline highlights one of them by a man who is publishing his own book on Rathergate:

Colonel William Campenni (ret.) served with then-Lieutenant Bush in the same unit of the Texas Air National Guard. He wrote some key columns debunking the Mary Mapes's fradulent 60 Minutes story on President Bush's service.
I just sent off the book proposal draft for the agent who is going to shop it around. In the chapter dedicated to the fake memos, I gave her a pass on stuff like the typos, fonts, etc., because you guys and others have already proved that. Instead I went against her new defense, repeated ad nauseam, and in bold italics in the above excerpt; that ALL the evidence supports the documents. I was running out of paper in tearing apart her own arguments and exposing glaring errors. One example: Twice in the 6 fakes one finds Bush's service number. Problem here for Mary is that these memos are in 1972 and 73. The Air Force stopped using service numbers on July 1, 1969, and switched over to social security numbers, 3 and 4 years prior. All of Bush's released records had the SSNo blacked out as required by law. But old service numbers from Bush's earlier documents were not redacted...

[The fabricator] grabbed the service numbers from released records, not realizing that they would never show up on a 72-73 document. Irony is, he put the anachronistic service numbers in the wrong format - the FG had to be a prefix, not a suffix, like FG 1234567...For a while we used to put the two letter code FG (means Air Guard; FR means Air Force Reserve, FV means active duty Air Force) as a suffix to the new SSNo ID, as in 987 65 4321FG. Later we dropped the two letter code entirely. [The fabricator's] personal experience was with the 987-65-4321 FV format (actually, the Army Guard used different codes), so when he grabbed the service number from files to add a hint of authenticity to the memos, he probably reverted to habit. Stupid, because if you look at Bush's real records, you will see the letters FG as a prefix - he couldn't even plagiarize correctly!

It's fun tearing apart this delusional woman's aberrant thought processes. I hope to meet her some day to talk about this stuff.

PS: I have never met Mapes and she never called me. She doesn't even know I exist. But in her radio debate with John last week, she launched into a tirade about how I was a Bush insider when Scott Henner simply mentioned my name (he had me on his show in February and September 2004). Now my wife wants to know why we aren't invited to White House dinners if I am such a buddy.

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And speaking of the press creating news rather than reporting it, Shane Briscoe at Ayes Right gives a list of several recent examples. Did the NTY hold on to its report on the NSA and spying story for a year because of security concerns (their story) or in order to release it at the same time as debate over the Patriot Act in order to maximize damage to the PResident? There is a precedent for this- the LA Times held on to allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of Arnold Schwarzenegger until the last minute before the election. " Strong evidence of cooperation between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein dating back to the 1990s that has been completely ignored by the mainstream press (Read The Connection by Stephen F. Hayes)" ~ these and other stories at Ayes Right.

Dr. Horsefeathers has some plain speaking for the NYT, including a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero worth reading.

Powerline points out "History tells us that nations sometimes react to a surprise attack by implementing overly aggressive internal security measures. This is an understandable response, but with the passage of time it becomes possible, and indeed imperative, to better calibrate security policy so as to better protect civil liberties.

It may be that the Bush administration over-estimated the threat of another terrorist attack. Or it may be that the threat has diminished due to the successes of the administration's policy. In any case, one can hardly disagree with Woods that this is a proper subject for debate.

So let's have the debate. President Bush has made his position clear. He believes that the ongoing threat to the homeland is such that there can be no diminution of our efforts to provide internal security. But what about the Democrats? Do they believe that the president over-estimated the threat al Qaeda poses to the homeland? Do they believe the administration has succeeded in substantially diminishing that threat? Do they believe it makes sense to talk about being at war with terrorism, such that the president should be invoking his wartime powers?

The Democrats haven't said, and they don't want to say. They would argue that these questions are too general, and that the focus should be on the specifics of the Patriot Act and other specific surveillance techniques. Such specifics are the legitimate subject of debate, but they are difficult to debate in the abstract, outside the context of the nature of the threat we face. Moreover, if Congress is concerned with the general tenor of Bush's internal security policy, it should want to provide him with general guidance, rather than focusing solely on a policy-by-policy approach. This is especially true if Congress believes Bush is secretly implementing abusive policies."

I emphasized that first sentence because I think it's important to stress that in all the debate about the NSA, whether or not the President broke the law, and if he did not, should there be a law against what he did. Many people, especially on the left, want to make this personal, about the President's personal character or lack thereof. But I think that's a mistake. This issue is bigger than personality.
I am not aware of any period in this nation's history when war did not lead our politicians to amass more power until the institution of government. It happens routinely, whether the politician is a 'nice' person or not. Institutions are self-perpetuating, and they do what they can to entrench themselves. If we ignore this fact of life and make this yet another issue where those on the left who are utterly deranged in their anti-bush sentiment, then we also avoid debating the important issues about the balance between security from outside threats, and security against threats from within, those posed by an intrusive government.

Thanks to The American Thinker for several good links this morning, and especially for this excellent article on The Tet Offensive and the American Media:

Tet had its origins in the plans of North Vietnamese commander Vo Nguyen Giap, a competent general given to flights of overconfidence. Giap decided to throw all available assets, both PAVN (People’s Army of North Vietnam) and Viet Cong, against every major target across South Vietnam....The result of all Giap’s efforts was a total rout. The South Vietnamese, utterly horrified by the prospect of a Communist takeover, sat tight while U.S. and government troops crushed the attack in a matter of days. The sole holdout was the old imperial citadel at Hue, which required three weeks to be retaken. The government stood firm, the ARVN, once recovered from its initial surprise, did a creditable job.

The Viet Cong, on the other hand, were ruined as a military force, their rural infrastructure left in tatters. They never fully recovered, forcing the PAVN to take over the bulk of combat duties. Giap, his reputation saving him from the usual fate of failed generals in communist societies, went back to the drawing board. (Though not very fruitfully—his next scheme was a “mini-Tet” in April, which ended much the same way.)

But that’s not how the U.S. public saw it.

American readers and viewers were presented with a disaster nearly beyond comprehension, with U.S. forces hanging on by their fingernails, ARVN troops tossing guns aside and running for safety, government officials given over to complete panic, Viet Cong and PAVN forces running wild with no losses to speak of, while General Giap, the 20th century Napoleon, nodded in approval at seeing his plan unfold. Tet ended up being a major success for communist forces after all.

It was the first time in history that the news media overturned a victory won by forces on the ground.

Must reading for every Common Room Scholar past and future who has had to read anything about the 20th century and Viet Nam.