The Democrat—friendly media machine launched an attack on the Speaker of the House. It is the latest round of manufactured scandal charges, intended to brand the GOP as corrupt, and convince the inattentive that where there is so much smoke there must be fire.

Left—wing British journalist David Rose has an article in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair which purports to show that House Speaker Dennis Hastert was involved in a bribery scandal. The gist of the faux scandal is that Hastert may have accepted tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the Turkish government in order to block a Congressional resolution laying blame on Turkey for the 1915—23 Armenian massacres.

In the article, Rose relies on "sources' who tell him of "secret recordings" in which Turkish diplomats referred to Hastert as "Denny—boy" and allegedly discussed making contributions of $500,000 to get Hastert to block the legislation. Rose seems to rely on Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator, who was fired from the FBI, for engaging in inappropriate behavior. She is now suing the FBI over her firing. Her attorney works for the ACLU — not a friendly group towards Republicans.

Even Edmonds admits that these supposed boasts by the Turkish officials could be merely that: hollow boasts. Vanity Fair also admits that there is no evidence that any payment was ever made to Hastert or his campaign. The magazine must be afraid of being accused of libel to add that disclaimer. But why run the article at all? There is no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Hastert.

David Rose, the author, has been duped before. Ahmad Chalabi took him in regarding the Iraq situation. Rose's political proclivities might be exemplified by his new book, titled Guantanamo: America's war on Human Rights.

Vanity Fair has joined the ever—growing list of magazines that have departed from their original missions and have morphed into anti—Bush, anti—Republican pseudo—scandal sheets.

Ed Lasky   8 05 05