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2004 Soap Box Archives Dan Rather 09/20/04 Dan Rather has been caught with his hand in the nation’s cookie jar. He used forged documents to try to discredit President Bush’s National Guard service record and no amount of hem hawing or dancing around the issue can change that fact. CBS should bow its corporate head in shame. But CBS and Dan Rather’s credibility should have been called into serious questioning in June of 1988 with the airing of a supposed documentary called The Wall Within. In this piece Rather interviewed several Vietnam veterans who claimed to have committed incredible atrocities. For instance, a man named Steve Southards claims to have gone into Vietnamese villages slaughtering the civilians and making it appear as if the Viet Cong had done it. As it turns out Southards, who claimed to be a Navy Seal assassin, had actually served as an equipment repairman and was not even in the vicinity of the combat zone. He interviewed a vet named George Grule who was supposedly severely traumatized when he saw a friend walk into the propeller of a plane on the deck the Ticonderoga aircraft carrier, an event which he claims made him unable to function in society. Turns out that there was such an incident aboard the carrier but Grule was nowhere around when it happened. By the time Grule served aboard the Ticonderoga it had been converted into an anti-submarine carrier running training missions along the California coast. Another vet, Mikal Rice, claims to have came by his trauma when a buddy died in his arms. Actually, Mikal Rice spent his tour of duty as a guard with an MP company at Cam Ranh Bay. He never saw combat. Terry Bradley told Rather that he had skinned 50 Vietnamese men women and children alive in one hour’s time and stacked their bodies in piles. As it turns out, Bradley was an ammunition handler in the 25th infantry division and spent nearly a year in the stockade for being AWOL. He too never saw combat. It’s almost beyond comprehension that a company as big as CBS would not even take the time to check the easily accessible records of these men. Why would a multimillion-dollar corporation be so slipshod about its facts? There has to be a reason. Dan Rather owes an apology to America and especially to the Vietnam veterans he tried to make look like monsters. He owes
an apology to the parents of the fifty two thousand And he owes an apology to the people who have faithfully watched his newscast for so many years who now have to wonder just how much bogus trash they’ve been fed over the years. Pray for our troops. What do you think? God Bless America Charlie Daniels
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