BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Wednesday, September 22, 2004
SNOOZING SAFIRE GETS A WAKE-UP
CALL. William Safire today advocates shackles
and leg irons for whoever
was responsible for the fake Jerry Killian memos. He writes in
today's New York Times:
That was no mere "dirty
trick"; it could be a violation of the U.S. criminal code. If the
artifice had not been revealed by sharp-eyed bloggers, a national
election could have been swung by a blatant falsehood.
Who was the forger? Did others
conspire with him or her to present a seeming government document
- with knowledge of its falsity and with intent to defraud, which
is a felony in Texas? Who was to benefit and how?
CBS News belatedly apologized
and agreed to appoint independent examiners. That's a
start.
Wow! Look out Democratic
dirty-tricksters: Safire is in da house.
But you might be interested to
learn that I did a quick check this morning on how the extremely
even-handed former Nixon operative has dealt with other shocking
scandals during the past year. For instance, I learned that the word
"Plame" came up in a Safire column precisely once, on July
14.
Actually, it didn't even appear in
Safire's column per se - it was, rather, cross-indexed by
Lexis-Nexis. The column itself was an attack on Valerie Plame's
husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, of the infamous Niger
mission. Wrote Safire:
Wilson testified to the
Senate Intelligence Committee that he had assured U.S. officials
back in 2002 that "there was nothing to the story." When columnist
Robert Novak raised the question of nepotism by reporting that he
got the assignment at the urging of his C.I.A. wife, Wilson denied
that heatedly and denounced her "outing," triggering an
investigation. The skilled self-promoter was then embraced as an
antiwar martyr, sold a book with "truth" in its title, appeared on
the cover of Time and every TV talk show denouncing Bush.
Now let's see ... any mention of
the fact that identifying Plame, an undercover CIA employee, may have
been a federal crime, and that the "senior administration officials"
who leaked her name to Novak might be eligible for shackles and leg
irons? Or that some of Safire's fellow journalists have been
threatened
with prison if they don't
tell a special prosecutor who those "senior administration officials"
are? In a word: no.
Even more hilarious is that the
only time Safire has used the words "Kerry" and "swift" together
during the past year was this past Sunday, in his "On Language"
column in the New York Times Magazine. Never mind that, for
weeks, Kerry was hammered by smears put forth by the lying Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth, funded and supported by some of the same Texas
Republicans who support George W. Bush. What was interesting to
Safire was where
the term "Swift boat" came from:
Larry Wasikowski, of
Omaha, Neb., who styles himself "the unofficial historian of the
Swift Boat Sailors Association," recalls, "We believe it came from
Sewart Seacraft, the manufacturer," but he claims no certainty
about the origin. Another association member, Jim Schneider, of
Rapid City, S.D., says that the owner of Sewart Seacraft, F.W.
Sewart, who died in 1995, told him ...
Zzzzzzzz.
Meanwhile, fellow Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof today goes on sensibly for a bit, blasting
the swift-boat attacks as the disgusting untruths that they are. But
then
he wigs out, more or less
equating them with Kerry's criticism of outsourcing. You can't make this
stuff up:
If they're intellectually
consistent, Democrats will speak out not only against the Swift
Boat Veterans but also against Mr. Kerry's demagoguery on trade,
like his suggestion that outsourcing is the result of Mr. Bush's
economic policies. Trade demagoguery may not be as felonious as an
assault on a war hero's character, but it harms America by
undermining support for free trade.
And so goes this depressing
campaign - and the even more depressing media coverage of
it.
posted at 9:29 AM |
4 comments
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4 Comments:
Hmm. I thought the debunking of the claim about Kerry's being in Cambodia on a secret mission, Christmas Eve 1968, wasn't an untruth. Isn't that why that tale was pulled from Kerry's web site and his team admitted that he really wasn't there?
Is someone doing a point-by-point review of what's in the Swift Vets book, Unfit for Command?
Funny you should ask. You will find the definitive takedown of "Unfit for Command" at www.dailyhowler.com.
To John:
Yes the Spin Boat Liars were thoroughly debunked, point-by-point in the LA Times, Washington Post, Bob Somerby at www.dailyhowler.com, and most recently by the US Navy who restated this week that Kerry deserved all his medals.
Laughably, none of the Spin Boat Liars either served with Kerry on his Swift Boat or witnessed the actions for which he was awarded medals.
One schmuck made the bizarre claim he treated Kerry's wound, even though the medical records are signed by another medic. Another says Kerry faced no gunfire during the encounter that earned him a bronze star --even though the same guy himself received a bronze star for taking enemy fire in that encounter.
They are complete phonies.
Wow, Safire's awake. His comments about violations of law sound remarkably similar to John Ellis' 'she better get a lawyer' one the other day. Myself, I think I hear the conservative media's echo chamber cranking up.
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
