Ticomaya wrote:This is the full quote of what Sowell said: "
Kerry has said that he would, that he has, and yet to this day he has never signed the simple form that Bush signed to make the facts available to all."
LINK
Yes, Kerry eventually signed the form, but
with conditions. He only authorized them to be released to the Boston Globe and the LA Times. He, in fact, has never signed the SF 180 to make his military records available to all.
He signed it to make them available only to a select few.
Not a lie, nimh. The lie is told by salon.com, and retold here by you.
Ah. Good catch. Good fact-checking. Careless (at the least) of the Salon author, Tim Grieve, to selectively quote that sentence.
Not the "plain lie" I called it, then, on the part of Sowell.
I would, however, contend that both Sowell and Grieve are guilty on the count of omission. In the same way, even (and I note that you in turn called Salon's reading a "lie").
This is what Sowell wrote, if I may add yet another bit of adjoining text to your quote:
Quote:Tim Russert is the only major media commentator who has ever asked him why he will not open his military records, as President Bush has done.
Kerry has said that he would, that he has, and yet to this day he has never signed the simple form that Bush signed to make the facts available to all.
Does this suggest that Kerry has never "opened his military records"? I'd say it clearly does. You'd have to be pretty keenly informed and concentrated to catch the bit where Sowell's sentence leaves open the hypothetical possibility that Kerry
did actually open his military records, but just not in the same way as Bush did.
Sowell and Grieve do the exact same thing here.
Grieve wrote that, "In fact, as the Boston Globe reported at the time, Kerry signed Standard Form 180, which 'waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records,' in May 2005." Which is true. He just conveniently omits to add that Kerry signed the release only to a limited audience.
Grieve also wrote that "Sowell says that Kerry 'to this day ... has never signed the simple form' required to release his military records." Which is true, it's not a lie - Sowell did say that. But in adding the subsequent sentence, Grieve implied that Sowell had said Kerry had not signed any version of the form. When Sowell had in fact just conveniently ignored the possibility of there being another way to sign the release form, which Kerry happened to
have done.
Sowell, in turn, writes that Kerry "never signed the simple form that Bush signed to make the facts available to all". Which is true, he didnt sign that form in such a way that the facts would be available to all. But he omits the inconvenient fact that Kerry
did actually sign that same form in a way that made those facts available at least to investigative journalists of two papers.
So what do we have here? Basically, Grieve was happy to give off the impression that Sowell said Kerry never signed any form to open his records, when in fact Sowell did not do so - he in turn had been happy to just give and leave the reader with
that impression.
Both cleverly avoiding the plain lie that I accused Sowell, and you Salon, of. But being pretty disingenious.
Pretty sad state of affairs, if you think about it.
But the way I see it, either youre OK with both, or with neither. I'm with neither.
