Dan Rather’s lawsuit to bespatter Bush (at last)

Posted by mcm

December 30, 2008

So maybe, just maybe, the truth about George W. Bush’s military service will come out big-time
at last–about nine years after the ill-fated J.H. Hatfield (remember him?) first broke the story
in his too-explosive book Fortunate Son. (That book is still the best biography of Bush, and
well worth reading even now, although everyone attacked it at the time.)

The Times ran something on the Rather suit some weeks ago. Has any other US media covered it?
(The piece below is from the UK.)

MCM

CBS newsman’s $70m lawsuit likely to deal Bush legacy a new blow

Christopher Goodwin in Los Angeles
The Observer, Sunday 28 December 2008

As George W Bush prepares to leave the White House, at least one unpleasant episode from his unpopular presidency is threatening to follow him into retirement.

A $70m lawsuit filed by Dan Rather, the veteran former newsreader for CBS Evening News, against his old network is reopening the debate over alleged favourable treatment that Bush received when he served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. Bush had hoped that this controversy had been dealt with once and for all during the 2004 election.

Eight weeks before the 2004 presidential poll, Rather broadcast a story based on newly discovered documents which appeared to show that Bush, whose service in the Texas Air National Guard ensured that he did not have to fight in Vietnam, had barely turned up even for basic duty. After an outcry from the White House and conservative bloggers who claimed that the report had been based on falsified documents, CBS retracted the story, saying that the documents’ authenticity could not be verified. Rather, who had been with CBS for decades and was one of the most familiar faces in American journalism, was fired by the network the day after the 2004 election.

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The Longest Line

On Election Day, 2004, election fraud was epidemic in Ohio (and throughout the nation). Would-be Democratic voters were impeded or disabled by the thousands, especially (though not only) in the inner cities and in college towns.

Bush/Cheney's drive to block the vote was particularly flagrant in Gambier, Ohio, home of Kenyon College. While student voters at nearby religious schools had quite an easy time of it, Kenyon's students had to wait for hours and hours and hours. Those long lines sooned turned out to have been purposely created, through the deliberate under-supply of working e-voting machinery to the polling sites at Kenyon. (The same thing happened all throughout the state and nationwide.)

After the election, Kenyon students wrote up an account of what they went through on that day and very late into the night. It's called The Longest Line. As it did not receive its due attention--and as we're heading toward another presidential race--I offer it to you for download here.

MCM