In case you’re wondering, it’s that second bit that has my nipples rock-candy hard. From Michael Dobbs, Saturday’s Washington Post:
Rather described his source as a man who said he, along with his family, has been harassed and threatened by political operatives. In interviews with journalists over the past few years, Burkett complained about receiving threatening phone calls at home, as well as a bullet with his name on it in his mailbox.
Another retired Guard officer who was interviewed for “60 Minutes,” Robert Strong, said earlier this week that Rather showed him copies of new Guard records on Bush that bore markings showing that they had been faxed from a Kinko’s copy shop in Abilene, Tex., 21 miles from Burkett’s home in Baird.
The CBS documents include several phrases that crop up in Web logs signed by Burkett, including “run interference,” and references to a pilot’s “billet.” Former Air National Guard officers have pointed out that “billet” is an Army expression, not an Air Force one. Burkett has also used the expression “cover your six,” a military variant of the vulgar abbreviation “CYA,” which appears in one of the CBS documents.
In an Aug. 21 posting, Burkett referred to a conversation with former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) about the need to counteract Republican tactics: “I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with. But none of them have called me back.”
Cleland confirmed that he had a two- or three-minute conversation by cell phone with a Texan named Burkett in mid-August while he was on a car ride. He remembers Burkett saying that he had “valuable” information about Bush, and asking what he should with it. “I told him to contact the [Kerry] campaign,” Cleland said. “You get this information tens of times a day, and you don’t know if it is legit or not.”
Seriously, my nipples are like diamond drill bits. Called upon to do so they could etch Dubliners onto a glass vase.
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h/t RatherBiased
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update: Ace has the siren up. And not surprisingly, Allah has more, including this thought:
[…] you had better believe that if the political orientations in this case were reversed, if it turned out that Bill Burkett had spoken to Trent Lott, say, and been told to “counterattack” by forwarding his information to the Bush campaign, Josh Marshall would be on a gurney somewhere getting zapped with those metal paddles to restart his fucking heart.
…At which point he’d immediately demand “a pen, a legal pad, my cellphone, and a six pack of Red Bull. Oh, and one of those energy bars—preferably something with chocolate chips and not a lot of carbs.”
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update the second (via Ernest Miller, commenting at Ace of Spades HQ): from the NYT:
“I spent some time on the phone with the Kerry campaign seniors yesterday,” Mr. Burkett wrote on Aug. 21 in an e-mail letter circulated to a list of about 600 Texas Democrats.
He complained that he had to “get through seven layers of bureaucratic kids trying to get a job after the election.”
“I talked with Max Cleland,” Mr. Burkett continued, referring to the former senator from Georgia who has been supporting Senator John Kerry’s Democratic presidential bid.
Alluding to advertisements by a veterans group that deprecates Mr. Kerry’s Vietnam service, Mr. Burkett continued, “I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack.”
“So I gave them the information to do it with,” Mr. Burkett wrote. “But none of them have called me back.”
Mr. Burkett did not say what information he offered. Earlier this year, he gained attention for saying that in 1998 he saw aides to Gov. George W. Bush of Texas and Guard officials dispose of pieces of Mr. Bush’s National Guard record that could prove politically embarrassing. Mr. Bush’s aides have denied his account.
“I volunteered to come back out with more,” Mr. Burkett wrote.
Maybe Finnegans Wake. Finnegans Wake would look nice on a vase.
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update the third: via Rathergate, this LA Times story, in which CBS actually blames its troubles on the White House! Which is like my blaming the occasional limp noodle on my Hootie and the Blowfish CDs.
Can an Oprah interview with Rather really be far off?
(Incidentally, I’ve torn through a pair of t-shirts and have taken to cutting garish Zs into the bathroom mirrors with my nipples. I’m that excited.)
PW,
1. Read your Kennedy and Chomsky interviews today. Damn. Good. Humor.
2. Think we’ll need a Marshall Plan to rebuild the Democrat party, following the pasting they’ll get in November?
— H.
So long as it’s a Josh Marshall plan. Which so far as I can tell would entail teaching everyone in the party to play Jenga. And to drink alcoholic beverages filthy with Grenadine.
Is that an apostrophe I see in “Finnegans Wake”?
Apostrophe? I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Jeff, your link to the NYT is dead. Thought you’d want to know.
Thanks, Lorenzo. Fixed it.
:spongg: It’s a “spong” morning.
Poor Kerry. He shot his eye out.
if you were really excited, it’d be Ulysses (spelling be damned). but it looks like we have not only fingerprints, but the dude holding the proverbial smoking gun. hope they throw the book at him. and speaking of books, do you think his will ever see the light of day, if it makes it off the presses?
….and Yes I said No I won’t Maybe.
Has Max Cleland, the Eternal Victim, accused anyone of questioning his patriotism yet?
In the play adapted from the song Finnegan’s Wake, with Dan Rather starring as Tim:
Tim Finnegan lived in Walker Street
A gentle Irishman mighty odd.
He’d a beauti-ful brogue so rich and sweet
To rise in the world he carried a hod.
Ya see he’d a sort of a tippling way,
With a love of the liquor old Tim was born,
And to help him on his way each day,
He’d a drop of the creature ev-ery morn.
One morning Tim was rather full;
His head felt heavy which made him shake,
Fell of the ladder and broke his skull;
So we carried him home a corpse to wake.
They wrapped him up in a nice clean sheet
And laid him out upon the bed,
Plenty of candles about his feet;
And a couple of dozen about his head.
but my point is actually made in the chorus:
Whack for the hur-rah
Take to your part-ners
Round the floor
Your trot-ters shake.
Is-n’t it the truth I’ve told ya
Lots of fun at Fin-ne-gan’s wake.
So of course there’s a possessive apostrophe. Unless maybe you meant the book Finnegans Wake. In which case:
Each side in war did soon engage;
‘Twas woman to woman and man to man.
Shillelagh-law was all the rage;
and a row and a ruction soon began.
riverun
Daniel, just this morning Cleland accused his wheelchair of questioning his patriotism.
I love that after 5 years of chasing the story, Mary Mapes finally decides to interview Killian’s secretary after the docs are proven to be fakes. If she were chasing the story for 5 years, seems like she would have interviewed the secretary while she was still in compos mentis about 4.99 years ago as her first interview. The gullibility of the MSM is amazing to me. Not only were they taken to the cleaners by the person giving them the memos when just comparing them to real ones from records already made public would show how faked they are, they then think that if they just sit there and stomp their feet and say over and over that they are real, then the little ponies will show up and carry them to paradise and all their dreams will be realized. Must be nice to be so trusting and concerning a politician too.
…then the little ponies will show up and carry them to paradise and all their dreams will be realized.
oh, oh! does that mean more Snickers bars!?
“Candles?!” Ye’ve got puir Finnegan surrounded with candles, and him already sufferin’ for a drop o’ the crayture?
Ahem.
With all due respect, the lyrics should be:
We rolled him up in a nice clean sheet
And laid him out upon the bed
With a gallon o’whiskey at his feet
And a bottle o’ porter at his head!”
I’m over here shaking my head. Candles. I mean, hasn’t the poor man suffered enough?
Something has been gnawing at me about the possible Cleland/Barnes/Burkett link…A stretch I know…but remember that August 26th trip to Crawford that Cleland made to deliver his little letter of protest to George? Might there have been a few other Texas stops during that theater of the absurd stunt?