McCain - he'll do what's right if there's an upside

In September of 2004, Dan Rather of CBS News anchored a report by Mary Mapes and her producing and reporting team on "President George W. Bush's dereliction of his National Guard duty."

"The firestorm that followed their broadcast trashed Mapes's well-respected career, caused Rather to resign from his anchor chair a year early, and led to an unprecedented 'internal inquiry' into the story--chaired by former Reagan attorney general Richard Thornburgh."

And you don't believe the power of the Bushites and the corporate world of which they are a part?

In her book, Truth and Duty - The Press, The President, and the Privilege of Power, Ms. Mapes describes in scintillating detail the story behind the story. It wasn't that CBS had the story wrong--Bush was and is guilty of dereliction of duty--it was they had the temerity to tell the story on the air.

Mapes' book is "a riveting chronicle of how the public's right to know--or even to ask questions--is being threatened by an alliance of politicians, news organizations, bloggers, and corporate America."

I'm reading the book. It's very hard to put down.


Mary Mapes worked for CBS News for 15 years, mostly with CBS Evening News and then with Dan Rather and 60 Minutes II. She was the one who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib prison tortures and for that was graced with the Peabody Award in 2005.

It is the Abu Ghraib prison torture story that this post is about.

When Ms. Mapes, Dan Rather, and others working together at CBS got a hint that certain soldiers were being detained in Iraq for unspecified reasons about which no one was talking and then that their detention had a relationship to an emerging story that something was badly wrong at the Abu Ghraib prison, they went after the story full-force. It was a long and difficult task as the military consistently dissembled and stonewalled the CBS investigative reporters.

Eventually, the CBS team was able to identify the soldiers involved, and through various interviews pieced together the brutal, disturbing tale. The most crucial evidence, though, consisted of the photographs which they were able to obtain, which have been published over and over again around the world - horrifying scenes of torture and debasement.

At that point, Ms. Mapes writes, "I began looking for people who could comment on what these pictures represented. My first thought was that Sen. John McCain would be ideal. As a former soldier and a former prisoner of war, McCain could offer valuable insight. I contacted his office and talked repeatedly to his aides, telling them what we had and how I hoped the senator could help us. In the end, they told me he was going to stay out of this one. This was an ugly story and there was no upside in volunteering to be part of it."

(Truth and Duty - The Press, The President, and the Privilege of Power, by Mary Mapes, 2005, St. Martin's Press, New York, pp. 123-124)


Could it be possible that in 2005 John McCain was in process of planning his run for the presidency in 2008? Is it possible that in light of his political ambitions he felt it would behoove him not to rile those militarists and politicos and corporate honchos who might find his involvement in outing the Pentagon's hidden Abu Ghraib scandal less than providential? Could that be the reason this American "hero" refused to get involved in setting right what was at the least, a betrayal of our professed American ideals?

If you should run into Senator McCain in your travels, ask him why he would not cooperate with CBS News in this most significant and crucial attempt to get at the truth of Abu Ghraib. Ask him if his morality is always based on whether there's an "upside" for John McCain.