Should Rather resign from CBS?

Looks like Dan ignored everything just to find another way to get Kerry in and Bush out. You might agree or disagree with that, but the documents weren't real and I think they really had suspect from the start...

so the guy makes 1 mistake over 50 years or how ever long he's been working there and you want to hang him? So what do you think about George Bush's simple mistake about Iraq?

This is not Rather's first bending of the truth to meet his agenda.

I like Rather, sometimes he can be a little funny and it's worth the laugh.

You bet. That's a big one!!! An attempt to affect the election. Way out of bounds and not his first. That is if I vote for Kerry or Bush, he needs to go! IMO

You think HE created those documents himself? You think he is a 'printed document' expert?

The blame falls on the fact-finders / behind the scenes investigative crew at CBS, NOT on Dan Rather.

Gimme a break.

-p

Clearly. Why report on information from a former US governor? What a liberal bastard, he should stick to the script the White House gives him like the rest of the US "news" media.

I call BULL SHIT!!! did watch him tonight???? He is attempting to pass blame off on someone else. Doesn't cut it with me. He's been in the biusiness to long. Knew what the guy was and on the second interview aired tonight; he told CBS that they needed to check the documents to be sure.

Rathergate... sounds familiar if you were around in the early 70's

and everything that comes out of FOX News is "fair and balanced"

lol Also people seem to forget even if the documents are fake what they state is true. No one talks about that, Bush and Cheney were draft dodgers but thats ok I dont understand at all.

Yeah, I remember!!!!!!!!!!

So what, I did what I could do avoid the draft. So did millions of guys. Fact documents don't prove jack. I got called and didn't want too, bit I showed up! Looks like Bush did too? The obvious, I don't know what happened for sure, but throwing up fake documents when you know it is bullshit. After 30 years in the biz, you should know BS when you see it!!!!

and what about the State of the Union speech???

Based on false documents ard doctored intelligence by a gung-ho president...
15000 civiliansd dead, 1000 US soldiers dead, 200 billion spent of borrowed money...;

Should he get fired !!!

Bush just probably gave him a little reminder. You're either for us or against us, and had the CIA send the message.

Don't need any more documents to know that Bush was just a fucking draft dodger. The National Guard was a place to hide during the Viet Nam war. He keeps trying to hook himself up with the national guard today, who are front line units and some of our best.

They smear a silver and bronze star winner and can't take the heat, when someone points out the truth about them. Don't even get me started on Cheney, Mr. defferment.

But you didnt say you were a wartime president and have the balls to wear a flight suit on the deck of a battle ship

Wow, what happened to the English you were speaking a few posts ago?

Speaking a different language? you HATE AMERICA you commie!

I am a redneck.

-P

mistake?

Well clearly, the answer isn't for Bush to allow the media access to the microfilm of his record (he has denied access). The answer is to fire any journalist trying to get answers.

The US is a democracy right? In any good democracy the press should just report on what the government wants them to.

defer to that Brick Wall, 12clicks.....

I'm not trying to save Bush's ass, just hang Rather out to dry. That is what he should get!!! Time for him to moveon.org.

That will be decided shortly..


what does that have to do with the subject of this thread?

Bush signed off on releasing all of his military documents a couple of weeks ago!!!!

must suck to be you . . . getting all worked up about something you have ZERO say in or control over.

why don't you just kill yourself?

Rather should resign because he knew what he did was way over the line!!!! He should resign because he knows it is what is required to have any hope of saving CBS...

There's so many lies floating around. Everyone should just do their research and vote for whoevers policy they like better. You know, like the actual purpose of elections, deciding who the people think has a better policy to govern their lives Rather than who they personally like better.

Pardon the pun.

Physical documents, most of which have mysteriously disappeared. There is a microfilm which Bush has continued to deny access to, as of yesterday. You know, there's a whole world going on outside of TV news. It's quite a bit different.

Good Phun! GFY speaks 10 for Rahter to stay and three to see him go. The same as a vote for who should be President, and it really is not the same question.

I like Dan's hair peice. leave him alone.

Perhaps he studied under the Clinton school of ethics?

I may need a hair piece soon, esp after all that's goin on in the world!!!! Don't have the balls to do what choker did to his hair line!!!

Clinton lies about a blow job he has no ethics but Bush lies about why we went to war and thats honorable.

ahhhhh, I feel better now, thanks for reading my rant!

Who cares about the blow jobs????? It was selling secrets for contributions that has me worried.


Well, if the do gooders of this nation really understood what phone sex was... Look what they did to PeeWee Herman!!! So Clinton J/Os on the phone in the oval office. Well that is class. Still don't care about that. It's all the security breaches that happened on his watch.

idiotic question

I had a feeling Clinton was behind this.

President Clinton very clearly dodged the draft.

Is he as bad as Bush then?

He didnt say he was a war time president and didnt play pilot dress up. They talked about if Clinton inhaled but didnt talk about Bushes booze and coke problem and that every business he ever ran failed. Thats why everytime I hear the press is liberal my blood boils.

LIAR!!!

Bill Clinton never dodged shit... He was simply never drafted.

He actually spoke to several commanders at the time before the lottery took place trying to arrange his status for the draft and get his school plans in order. He was attending Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Because of his scholarship he was eligible to join an ROTC program out of school once he finished his studies at Oxford IF he was ever drafted, or he could opt out and agree to finish his current term at Oxford.

Originally he agree to the ROTC deal, but found out that a freidn of his from high school was killed and felt guilty so he turned the ROTC deal down before the lottery was held.

Once the lottery was held he was eligible to get drafted like anyone else, but they started pulling troops out of Vietnam before his group ever got a call.

THUS, he did not dodge the draft, he was never called to go in the first place.

he is a face that reads things! thats all!

Oh come on now...of course not!

Clinton's ROTC Letter
As Entered in Congressional Record (Page: H5550) 7/30/93

Dear Col. Holmes,

I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on you will, but I have to have some time to think about this first letter. Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to say.

First, I want to thank you, not only for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing that made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC.

Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary but also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did.

I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations October 15 and November 16.

Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar at Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification of selective conscientious objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular war, not simply to "participation in war in any form."

From my work, I came to believe that the draft system itself is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war, which in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation. The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the people collectively was at stake.

Individuals had to fight, if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their country and their way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea an example where, in my opinion, certain military action was justified but the draft was not, for the reasons stated above.

Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe die for their country (i.e. the particular policy of a particular government) right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft board, a letter I am more proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft resister who is possibly under indictment and may never be able to go home again. He is one of the bravest, best men I know. His country needs men like him more than they know. That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity.

The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason only, to maintain my political viability within the system. For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political life characterized by both practical political ability and concern for rapid social progress. It is a life I still feel compelled to try to lead. I do not think our system of government is by definition corrupt, however dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years. (The society may be corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true we are all finished anyway.)

When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one way in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and the resistance. Going on with my education, even coming back to England, played no part in my decision to join ROTC. I am back here, and would have been at Arkansas Law School because there is nothing else I can do. I would like to have been able to take a year out perhaps to teach in a small college or work on some community action project and in the process to decide whether to attend law school or graduate school and how to begin putting what I have learned to use.

But the particulars of my personal life are not near as important to me as the principles involved. After I signed the ROTC letter of intent I began to wonder whether the compromise I had made with myself was not more objectionable than the draft would have been, because I had no interest in the ROTC program itself and all I seem to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I had begun to think that I had deceived you, not by lies--there were none--but by failing to tell you all of the things I'm telling you now. I doubt I had the mental coherence to articulate them then.

Page 2.

At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent my 1D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of my self regard and self confidence really set in. I hardly slept for weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought sleep. Finally, on September 12 I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board, saying basically what is in the preceding paragraph, thanking him for trying to help in a case where he really couldn't, and stating that I couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft me as soon as possible.

I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it with me every day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't mail the letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my going in the army and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to make something of the second year of my Rhodes scholarship.

And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes and the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is dis-service, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal.

Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. There is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say hello to Colonel Jones for me. Merry Christmas.

Sincerely,

Bill Clinton

Col. Holmes Notarized Statement
As Entered in Congressional Record (Page: H5551) 7/30/93

September 7, 1992. Memorandum for Record:

Subject: Bill Clinton and the University of Arkansas ROTC Program:

There have been many unanswered questions as to the circumstances surrounding Bill Clinton's involvement with the ROTC department at the University of Arkansas. Prior to this time I have not felt the necessity for discussing the details. The reason I have not done so before is that my poor physical health (a consequence of participation in the Bataan Death March and the subsequent three and a half years interment in Japanese POW camps) has precluded me from getting into what I felt was unnecessary involvement. However, present polls show that there is the imminent danger to our country of a draft dodger becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. While it is true, as Mr. Clinton has stated, that there were many others who avoided serving their country in the Vietnam war, they are not aspiring to be the President of the United States.

The tremendous implications of the possibility of his becoming Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces compels me now to comment on the facts concerning Mr. Clinton's evasion of the draft. This account would not have been imperative had Bill Clinton been completely honest with the American public concerning this matter. But as Mr. Clinton replied on a news conference this evening (September 5, 1992) after being asked another particular about his dodging the draft,

"Almost everyone concerned with these incidents are dead. I have no more comments to make".
Since I may be the only person living who can give a first hand account of what actually transpired, I am obligated by my love for my country and my sense of duty to divulge what actually happened and make it a matter of record.

Bill Clinton came to see me at my home in 1969 to discuss his desire to enroll in the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas. We engaged in an extensive, approximately two (2) hour interview. At no time during this long conversation about his desire to join the program did he inform me of his involvement, participation and actually organizing protests against the United States involvement in South East Asia. He was shrewd enough to realize that had I been aware of his activities, he would not have been accepted into the ROTC program as a potential officer in the United States Army.

The next day I began to receive phone calls regarding Bill Clinton's draft status. I was informed by the draft board that it was of interest to Senator Fullbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be admitted to the ROTC program. I received several such calls. The general message conveyed by the draft board to me was that Senator Fullbright's office was putting pressure on them and that they needed my help. I then made the necessary arrangements to enroll Mr. Clinton into the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas.

I was not "saving" him from serving his country, as he erroneously thanked me for in his letter from England (dated December 3, 1969). I was making it possible for a Rhodes Scholar to serve in the military as an officer. In retrospect I see that Mr. Clinton had no intention of following through with his agreement to join the Army ROTC program at the University of Arkansas or to attend the University of Arkansas Law School. I had explained to him the necessity of enrolling at the University of Arkansas as a student in order to be eligible to take the ROTC program at the University. He never enrolled at the University of Arkansas, but instead enrolled at Yale after attending Oxford. I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft classification.

The December 3rd letter written to me by Mr. Clinton, and subsequently taken from the files by Lt. Col. Clint Jones, my executive officer, was placed into the ROTC files so that a record would be available in case the applicant should again petition to enter the ROTC program. The information in that letter alone would have restricted Bill Clinton from ever qualifying to be an officer in the United States Military. Even more significant was his lack of veracity in purposefully defrauding the military by deceiving me, both in concealing his anti-military activities overseas and his counterfeit intentions for later military service. These actions cause me to question both his patriotism and his integrity. When I consider the caliber, the bravery, and the patriotism of the fine young soldiers whose deaths I have witnessed, and others whose funerals I have attended.... When I reflect on not only the willingness but eagerness that so many of them displayed in their earnest desire to defend and serve their country, it is untenable and incomprehensible to me that a man who was not merely unwilling to serve his country, but actually protested against its military, should ever be in the position of Commander-in-Chief of our armed Forces.

I write this declaration not only for the living and future generations, but for those who fought and died for our country. If space and time permitted I would include the names of the ones I knew and fought with, and along with them I would mention my brother Bob, who was killed during World War II and is buried in Cambridge, England (at the age of 23, about the age Bill Clinton was when he was over in England protesting the war). I have agonized over whether or not to submit this statement to the American people. But, I realize that even though I served my country by being in the military for over 32 years, and having gone through the ordeal of months of combat under the worst of conditions followed by years of imprisonment by the Japanese, it is not enough. I'm writing these comments to let everyone know that I love my country more than I do my own personal security and well-being. I will go to my grave loving these United States of America and the liberty for which so many men have fought and died. Because of my poor physical condition this will be my final statement. I will make no further comments to any of the media regarding this issue.

Eugene Holmes

Colonel, U.S.A., Ret.

September 1992

I guess the NO's have it

I personally think that bush put so much pressure on CBS that they claimed it was bull

should Rather resign?
maybe...

he relied on "faulty intelligence."



Warchild that is powerful statement...how do you feel about Bush's National guard service?

I will now envoke my chosen punishment.

Dan must "narfle the garthog"

stick a dull stick into the great Eye.

Was that what the lord of the rings was agout.

As I stated in another thread I believe both George Bush AND Bill Clinton dodged the draft.

Bush haters like the coin to be only single sided. That is, everyone that spoke negatively of Bush was telling the truth and everyone that spoke negatively of Clinton was lying.

In my mind we need to look at all the evidence in both cases. Most probably, they both dodged the draft.

wrong.

Undoubtedly Clinton got around the draft with his wits. Bush did with his connections. Clinton was constantly hammered for his draft evasion in the right wing press.

So, turnabout is fair play, especially the way Bush attacked McCain in the republican primaries. Even more so as they are stretchng the military to capacity to hold down casualities for political implications.

McCain and other republicans with military experience are saying..Iraq needs more U.S. boots on the ground.