Well, this story is all over the ‘sphere but I do feel compelled to jump on the bandwagon as well. MSNBC has decent coverage of the story here. What I found most interesting was the CBS response to the panel’s investigation. It’s in PDF, but you can access it here.

Alright, so they hung the blame on Mapes and she does bear the brunt of responsibility and was deservedly fired. Three other senior management folks who failed to provide the oversight that they were paid to provide were relieved of their duties and asked to resign. That is also appropriate.

They gave Rather a pass which is somewhat of a double-standard, especially in light of the lame excuses offered in his defense. The fact that he is stepping down in March means little since he will still be reporting on stories as a senior correspondent. I don’t believe he can be trusted to offer the weather in an unbiased fashion.

Andrew Heyward, CBS News President, also got a pass. I’m more willing to give him the benefit of doubt because it appears he was asking the right questions, and being fed a load of BS from his underlings.

Although the panel found that CBS pursued the story with “myopic zeal” resulting in a story that was “neither fair nor accurate”, they conclude:

The independent investigators former Republican Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, retired president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press said they could find no evidence to conclude the report aired two months before the election was fueled by a political agenda.

Ok, if you say so. How do you define political agenda? If all those involved had the same documented dislike of George Bush as does Dan Rather, isn’t it just a little bit possible that this fact contributed to the “myopic zeal” in which they pursued the story (and more importantly, ignored evidence in their possession that undermined the basic premise of the story)? I remain convinced that it was political bias and/or personal agendas that caused all the breakdowns in standards and practices that allowed this story to air. Just the fact that Mapes was in contact the DNC (who coincidentally began a major ad campaign the day after the report was aired challenging the President’s guard service) seems like pretty good evidence of political bias, but hey, what do I know–I’m just a news consumer (but not from CBS thankfully).

Anyway, Rather deserved to be dismissed for his conduct after the story was aired. Calling critics of his reporting “partisan hacks” (critics who were proven correct) is not political bias, right Dan?

Overall, I will give CBS a B- for its actions in response to the report. Am I being too easy or too harsh?

hat tip to More sense than money, where I lifted the quote.

A wide awake reader sent me this:

I got the company newsletter about five days after I started working at my new job. The front page of it dealt with one of the guys who
works here, his reserve unit was called up,and he’s been serving in
Iraq for the last few months. Just last week he got his first leave
and came home.

The article then continued, listing employees who had a family member
serving in Iraq and Afganistan. From what I remember, we’ve got about
a dozen of those. There’s a pretty good spread too. From the lowest
manual labor job, up through managers and Department heads, there are
folks who’ve got a son, or brother, or husband serving in a war zone.
That’s what made what I saw later the same day all the more amazing.

I’m working on a system, and then I notice the corkboard behind this
chick’s desk. She’d just put up a large poster, using the same color
scheme and logo that the Army uses for their recruiting. The poster
was of a cemetery. Rows and rows of headstones. The caption?

“You can’t be all that you can be if you’re DEAD.”

I walked over, and took a closer look. The message underneath
basically said, “You can serve your country, and get money for college
in ways besides serving in the military.”

Nice. Just nice.

Now notice, this isn’t a poster saying the war in Iraq is wrong.
People can disagree about that. I personally stay up some nights
wondering if those people over there are worth one drop of American
blood. Like I said, people can disagree about policy, that’s America,
Jack.

This was a poster encouraging people not to enlist in the military.
This is also a poster, the subtext of which states, ‘If you serve in
the armed forces, you’re a moron. You’re also probably going to die.”

There are people not three desks from where this…individual…sits
that have loved ones serving over there. She posts a poster of a
giant cemetary which implies this is where a soldier or marine will
most likely end up.

That’s so classy!

Tell me that part about how the left supports our troops but not the war again?

Let me break this down for you, honey. If it wasn’t for that ‘moron’
slinging a rifle and guarding your freedom, if it wasn’t for that hick
planted in that cemetary that your friends photographed, you wouldn’t
have the freedom to ‘be all that you can be’.

Then again, I’ve met you. You didn’t turn out to be much.

Sometimes I think it must really be nice to live in a “reality” where the military serves no purpose. A “reality” where no one would attack you if you could not defend yourself. A “reality” where terrorists did not crash planes into buildings thinking we had grown weak and soft and would not have the will to strike back.

To bad for the rest of us who must live in a world where difficult choices must be made in the interest of security and where freedom is never free. We have our compensations though. Like a dedicated, professional, all volunteer military who is out there protecting us from evil doers who would see us dead or enslaved. We can sleep safe and secure in our beds each night because these brave men and women are on the job. Hell, maybe we can even have dreams of alternate realities, just like the woman described above. Of course, we will wake up free and give a prayer of thanks for the people who sacrafice so much to make that possible.

And that’s my reality.

UPDATE: Found this quote over at FlightPundit. Thought it fit nicely here:

“the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”

Samuel P. Huntington