Caveat lector

THE LAST BULLDOG DIES (PART 1)! Bulldog Tim rolled over and died. Can we stop calling Russert a bulldog?

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2004

THE LAST BULLDOG DIES: Tim Russert’s first question showed a small bit of promise. “On Friday,” he said to his guest, “you announced a committee, a commission to look into intelligence failures regarding the Iraq war and our entire intelligence community. You have been reluctant to do that for some time. Why?” But instead of an answer, he got a long speech—the first of many he’d hear this morning. “Let me step back and talk about intelligence in general,” his slow-talking guest slowly said:

BUSH: Well, at first, let me step back and talk about intelligence in general, if I might. Intelligence is a vital part of fighting and winning the war against the terrorists, because the war against terrorists is a war against individuals who hide in caves in remote parts of the world, individuals who have these kind of shadowy networks, individuals who deal with rogue nations, and so we need a good intelligence system. We need really good intelligence. And so the commission I set up is to, obviously, analyze what went right or what went wrong with the Iraqi intelligence. It was kind of lessons learned. But it’s really set up to make sure the intelligence services provide as good a product as possible for future presidents as well, which is a part of analyzing where we are on the war against terror.

There is a lot of investigations [sic] going on about the intelligence service, particularly in the Congress, and that’s good as well. The Congress has got the capacity to look at the intelligence gathering without giving away state secrets, and I look forward to all the investigations and looks—again, I repeat to you, the capacity to have good intelligence means that a president can make good calls about fighting this war on terror.

But readers, you know that ol’ bulldog, Tim Russert! Surely he got in Bush’s face with a tough-talking follow-up question, a question designed to force his guest to get himself back on the mark! After all, Russert is the toughest pundit in all punditdom, pundits say. He’s just “like a prosecutor,” they like to say. You can run—but you can’t hide from Russert.

But no, Russert didn’t follow up when Bush gave a speech to avoid his first question. As he did throughout the hour, he simply moved on to Question 2 when Bush failed to answer Question 1. What happened to that frightening bulldog—the one the press has talked up for years? You saw it—that bulldog turned to a puddy-tat, coughed a hairball and died. What became of Bulldog Tim? That “dog” didn’t bark, hunt or slobber.

Irrelevant “answers” went without follow-up. Blatant misstatements by Bush went unchallenged. Bush was allowed to give long, windy speeches—speeches so long and so slow that it sometimes seemed that Russert must have left the building. And where, on where were those film clips Tim loves—the clips where he highlights his target’s past statements? Such clips had been sent down the memory-hole, along with the “bulldog” your fake pundits love. “No no no no no no no?” Russert loved lecturing Dean last June. This Sunday, the phrase wasn’t heard.

But don’t worry—pundits immediately began pretending that Russert really put Bush through the hoops. They know the script, and they love to recite. We’ll examine the clowning all week.

SHALES KNOWS SCRIPTS: Every scribe is reciting the script today, so perhaps we shouldn’t jump on Tom Shales. But in this morning’s Washington Post, the reigning expert on Kathy Lee Gifford says what all pundits are saying:

SHALES (pgh 1): What did the president really know, and what made him think he really knew it? That was sort of the question put over and over to George W. Bush by Tim Russert of NBC News on a special edition of Meet the Press yesterday. Russert interrogated Bush on the matter of faulty intelligence and the role it played in Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

(2-3) The portly inquisitor concentrated so relentlessly on that subject, in fact, that there may have been insufficient time for other topics…Somewhat reminiscent of Raymond Burr as Perry Mason when he bore down on a victim in the witness chair, Russert proved a tough questioner without becoming a showoff…

IT’S TIME FOR TIMES AWOLS TO ANSWER: The Times is sticking to its story. In this morning’s page-one lead story, Richard Stevenson offers this misleading account of Bush and the National Guard:

STEVENSON (pgh 2): In a rare broadcast interview that he agreed to do as his poll numbers were falling and Democrats were increasingly hopeful of ousting him in November, Mr. Bush said on “Meet the Press” that he was far from alone in judging Saddam Hussein to be a threat. He rebutted accusations that he did not complete all of his duties while in the National Guard in 1972. He portrayed job growth as strengthening and did not rule out the possibility of more tax cuts.

Why does Stevenson limit the problem to 1972? In all likelihood, he restricts his scope because the New York Times accepted the validity of the famous “torn document” in its Campaign 2000 reporting. If the “torn document” shows what Bush’s aides claim, then Bush didn’t skip a full year of service. According to the famous doc, Bush returned to service in November 1972—and Bush’s two commanders in Houston were oddly, mysteriously wrong.

But why did the Times accept the torn document? Bush’s name doesn’t appear on the document, and the SS number has been redacted. There is no apparent way to know if it really records Bush’s service. Why did the Times accept this document? We’ve heard that ex-Times reporter Jo Thomas wouldn’t say when interviewed by Eric Boehlert last week. But it’s long past time for the New York Times to answer this simple question.

The famous “torn document” is laughably shaky. Meanwhile, Bush’s commanders in Houston said, in real time, that he didn’t serve. Why did Thomas accept a shaky torn document—and call this pair of commanders Big Fools? The New York Times has had four years. It’s time for these AWOLs to answer.

STILL KEEPING THE RUBES DUMB AND HAPPY: Do you read the Washington Times? If so, you won’t have to learn unsettling facts about your inspiring president. How else to read the paper’s posts concerning the “Bush AWOL” matter? On Friday morning, editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden tackled the case in his weekly column. But here was Pruden’s hapless attempt to summarize what is at issue:

PRUDEN (2/6/04): The rap on George W., noised about mostly by those who would rather go naked in a snowstorm than wear their country’s uniform, is that he went AWOL from a few Air National Guard make-up drills. This accusation got a tryout in 2000, when the Boston Globe measured George W.’s Air National Guard service against Al Gore’s duty writing press handouts in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Now some Democrats are trying to mount this horse, which is still dead.

PRUDEN: In 1972, [Bush] moved to Alabama to work in the unsuccessful Senate campaign of Winton Blount, and received permission to train with a squadron in Montgomery. One officer told the Globe that he didn’t remember the young Texan making up drills there; others do remember him. He returned to his Texas unit the following spring and made up some of the missed Alabama drills. Make-up drills were not unusual in Air National Guard units at that time.

But then, everything published in the Washington Times buries the facts of this case. Also on Friday, the Times published an op-ed piece by three Republican congressmen. Was Bush “AWOL” or a “deserter?” Here is their account of the matter:

JOHNSON/KIRK/PEARCE (2/6/04): Contrary to these bogus allegations, the president was honorably discharged from the National Guard. In fact, the nonpartisan Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania thoroughly investigated and dispelled these false charges. The Annenberg Center reported, “The Associated Press quoted two friends who worked with Bush in the Blount campaign as saying they recall him attending Air National Guard drills in Alabama.” And they concluded, “The fact is Bush was honorably discharged without ever being officially accused of desertion or being away without official leave.”

The Times continued the clowning on Saturday. In yet another op-ed piece, Dan Thomasson battered those who discuss this topic. But here was his full account of the facts:

THOMASSON: [I]t is becoming clear the tenor of the campaign could descend into one of hatefulness with Kerry surrogates, if not him personally, prepared…to contend that the president actually shirked his duty while in the Air National Guard. That is exactly what [DNC head Terry] McAuliffe did recently on nationwide television, stating that the president was AWOL while assigned to an Alabama Guard unit. It is not a new accusation, but it never has been substantiated and Mr. Bush has denied it vehemently.

Indeed, have WashTimes readers ever been told the basic facts of the Bush AWOL case? Apparently not. According to Nexis and WT archives, the Times has offered no reporting on this matter since it resurfaced a few weeks ago. Instead, readers are handed pleasing accounts of the “facts” from permissive protectors like Pruden. Wes understands his paper’s job—to keep readers from hearing basic facts.

Meanwhile, Fox viewers don’t have to worry their heads about this matter, either. On Fox, “all-stars” seem to know it’s their job to keep viewers barefoot and clueless. Case in point? Mara Liasson. As we noted on Friday, Liasson ducked the facts of the case on last Thursday’s Special Report (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/6/04). But it wasn’t because she didn’t know them. Here she was the very next day, on NPR’s All Things Considered:

LIASSON: Here’s the background. More than 30 years ago, John Kerry was in Vietnam, in combat, winning medals for valor. George W. Bush was learning to fly jets for the Texas Air National Guard, a post that was made possible by his family connections. There’s a one-year gap in the record of Mr. Bush’s service from May 1972 to May 1973. During that time, he was allowed to transfer to an Alabama Air Guard unit because he was working on an Alabama Senate campaign. But there are no paper records that show Mr. Bush performed any military duty in Alabama.