Now that the election is history, it seems to me there is some unfinished business I'm afraid will get swept under the rug.
I know if these matters are left to my colleagues in the Big Media, we will never see another meaningful story about of these matters. Therefore, I raise them today in hopes of generating enough interest with the American people to keep them alive.
First, there is the matter of Sandy Berger, former national security adviser, caught red-handed removing highly classified documents from the National Archives. It has been four months since we learned the Justice Department was investigating the matter.
Can I ask some obvious questions? What takes so long to determine how to prosecute a former national security adviser for violating national security rules? How long would it take to prosecute an average citizen for the same offense? Should we not have a higher standard of accountability for a former official who should understand the need to protect top security papers? Is this little scandal going to be buried by the Justice Department as part of George W. Bush's efforts to "heal the nation" following the rough-and-tumble presidential election?
There has not been a meaningful follow-up story anywhere in the Big Media since the story broke four months ago. Berger is back out on the lecture circuit. He has not seen one day inside a jail cell as a result of this breathtakingly severe offense. We don't know much more about the nature of the papers he secreted out of the National Archives.
My guess is we the people will never know much more than we know today unless we make some noise about it – unless we absolutely demand justice.
The second matter of unfinished business is the Dan Rather caper. CBS News promised a full report on the scandal involving phonied-up documents used in a news report about George W. Bush's National Guard service. Perhaps the execs at the network need a reminder that John Kerry has conceded the election and that preparations are underway for the inauguration of the president.
Just when can we expect to see that report? When can we expect to hear about punishments being meted out? I hate to be crude, but what is the plan for putting Dan Rather out to pasture?
My third order of unfinished business is one that is less obvious.
Two weeks ago, in the heat of the closing days of a bitter and divisive election campaign, the Big Media were infatuated with a story about an arms dump in Iraq – al-Qaqaa, I believe it was called. There seemed to be a big scandal I never quite understood – something about ammunition being left unguarded in the early days of the invasion of Iraq.
The New York Times, the Bible of the Big Media, was breathless about the scandal. The rest of the Big Media could write and talk about little else in the final days of the campaign.
Then the story died.
The real story, it always seemed to me, was that these munitions were discovered by the United Nations arms inspectors, sealed by them, but never destroyed. It was the explicit charge of the U.N. weapons inspectors to destroy illegal weapons like these. But they didn't do their job.
But I doubt very much there will be any follow-up to this story, now that the election is over. That's because it was, from the beginning, crafted as a campaign tool for John Kerry. It didn't work, and so the al-Qaqaa story goes wherever such politically motivated stories go once they have proven ineffective.
What would you expect from a story called al-Qaqaa?
And what are the chances we'll ever get to the bottom of these three stories now that the election is over?
Americans again prove Pres Bush is the best man for the job
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The person who has nothing for which he is willing
to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
