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July 22, 2006
More Left-wing Lies Exposed
All those great quotes (some even used in the comments on this blog by lefties) turns out to be false. From CQ:
For the last several years, a trashy political version of the Weekly World News has made a number of salacious and lurid claims about key political figures, mostly George Bush. Capitol Hill Blue originated stories about Bush being addicted to drugs, falling off the wagon, and so on. The allegation that he had referred to the Constitution as "just a G******d piece of paper" came from one of their articles, as did the explosive, supposedly first-person account of Bush being briefed that the Niger claim was bogus before his State of the Union speech. (Interestingly, the Senate's Intelligence Committee later confirmed that the Niger story was true, but that didn't stop CHB.)
What made these stories compelling was that they used sources who put their names on the record. CHB identified two of them: Terry Wilkinson, a former CIA advisor, and George Harleigh, a professor at Southern Illinois University who worked in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations. That sourcing created enough credibility with some on the Left that they bought these stories hook, line, and sinker, and propagated them throughout the blogosphere.
However, it looks like neither one ever actually existed. Eric at Classical Values has an amazing post showing a tremendous effort on his part to identify Harleigh without success at either SIU or within either administration. He also has cached pages from CHB where a Stailn-like process of erasing both sources from these stories has taken place. CHB has no answer despite repeated attempts by Eric to get an explanation for all of these activities.
I don't think too much fault should be placed on people who used these quotes because it looks like they appeared to be credible. But it still strikes at the underlying assumptions about President Bush. If you believed that Bush said that the constitution is just a God Damn piece of paper, then you would be concerned about domestic spying. Now, however, the foundation for those beliefs continue to crumble.
Posted by Aaron at July 22, 2006 10:34 AM
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Comments
Did Rather and Mapes author that piece in CHB?
Posted by: Skul at July 23, 2006 08:56 AM