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Last updated on May 20th, 2017 at 06:58 am
No graduation ceremony for Richard Butler:
CBS News journalist Richard Butler said he believes he was kidnapped in Iraq by policemen with sympathies toward the Hezbollah but isn’t entirely sure who held him captive for two months or why …
“I was pleased I wasn’t being mortarboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an Al-Jazeera cameraman, for instance,” he said.
(Via Tom W.)
Allen Pizzey, that name looks ripe for parody. Does he drink?
Butler to go back to reporting world’s danger spots not Basra anytime soon
#2 Yes Put-in concrete. Not Muggebee land for Butler same happens there bodies and maybe kidnapped by policemen with sympathies toward Muggebee.
Major Strasser: How about New York?
Rick: Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.Maybe Redfern or Cabramatta? Plenty of police action there at the moment.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 04 30 at 06:41 AM • permalink
It’s all about Bush as usual, isn’t it?
Posted by JJM Ballantyne on 2008 04 30 at 06:46 AM • permalink
Mortarboarding helps us cement ties with less friendly nations.
Posted by mr creosote on 2008 04 30 at 07:17 AM • permalink
but he was still held with a sack over his head and arm restraints. He eventually got the sense that his captors didn’t intend to kill him
…
Butler said he felt it was better to be kidnapped in Iraq then taken into custody by Americans in Afghanistan.
…
Butler said he lost about 42 pounds and during the last 12 days of his captivity, ate one tangerine and four boiled eggsClearly, Richard Butler must have been trying one fad diet after another and nothing seemed to work. But being taken away from any of his old bad habits and his bad influences, binding his arms to prevent temptation, and an enforced starvation diet really seemed to work wonders.
I’m sure his only regret is that he didn’t have the chance to lose another ten pounds via their patent-pending saw your head off with a large knife procedure.
If he had been taken to Guantanamo not only would have gotten pudgier but he would have had to worry about what SPF to use.
Posted by Col. Milquetoast on 2008 04 30 at 07:21 AM • permalink
Its nice to see that CBS News hires reporters with no hidden agendas. I will be looking forward to future objective, unbiased reports from Mr. Butler. Oh, in this wonder fantasy world can I be rich and have yacht the size of Geffen’s?
Posted by Mark Razak on 2008 04 30 at 07:39 AM • permalink
Goddam (can I say that here??) lucky he wasn’t matriculated.
Posted by surfmaster on 2008 04 30 at 07:39 AM • permalink
Why would you torture a journalist?
You torture people to get information, facts and knowledge.
Most MSM types don’t have any of that – they have opinions, prejudices and bias. Certainly no facts or knowledge.
The only reason to torture him would be to make him squeal like a pig.
Posted by mr creosote on 2008 04 30 at 07:50 AM • permalink
he heard a lot of …Hezbollah ringtones on mobile phones
For a ringtone of suicide bomber bloopers text 1232 to…
For a ringtone of the official Hezbollah barbershop quartet singing “Barbie Girl” with funny hezbollah related lyrics text 1233 to…
For a ringtone of Hassan Nasrallah telling you in his hottest, sexiest voice that he wants to be one of your 72 virgins text 1234 to…
Posted by Col. Milquetoast on 2008 04 30 at 07:58 AM • permalink
Well of course they didn’t kill him. Once they realised he was an ally.
Posted by Toiling Mass on 2008 04 30 at 08:00 AM • permalink
“Straight away you assess the situation,” he said. “I am standing there, in front of these eight guys with AK-47s, and I am in a pair of underpants and a T-shirt. The odds are not in my favor. So there is no point in trying to do anything heroic or stupid.”
The idea of an MSM journalist doing anything heroic is actually funny. And he clearly saved his stupid stuff for after he was released.
Richard Butthead’s disembodied head speaks:
As I hang here in the air
While a Hezbo grabs my hair
I can say hurray hurrah
I am not in America.Posted by dean martin on 2008 04 30 at 08:07 AM • permalink
- “Thank Goodness I wasn’t mortarlised by Joe McCarthy!”
So why did Murrow ignore McCarthy’s over-arching charge? As Ann Coulter suggested in Human Events, the reason may lie in an event that happened six years earlier. In 1948, a long-time friend of Murrow, former State Department official Lawrence Duggan, fell to his death from the window of his Manhattan office. Duggan’s death, described as a suicide, came only 10 days after he was questioned by the FBI about his role in a communist spy ring. For many years, Duggan’s friends and family–a group that included Ed Murrow–lionized him as an early victim of the Red Scare. But information from Moscow’s intelligence archives, released in the early 1990s, confirms that Duggan was a Soviet agent, providing sensitive diplomatic information to his handlers. In fact, Mr. Duggan was considered such an important spy that the Russians ordered the murder of at least one defector, to protect their mole in the State Department.While such information was unknown outside counter-intelligence circles, Murrow had easy access to the highest levels of American government. President Eisenhower was a friend, as were numerous cabinet and other senior-level government officials. With those contacts–and a little digging–Murrow might have discovered substantiation for McCarthy’s charges and produced a more revelatory film.
Spooky!
#18 – sorry you will have to buy me a drink first 🙂
Posted by surfmaster on 2008 04 30 at 08:25 AM • permalink
#19 There are many unexplained stories. Until KGB/GRU archives are opened we will not know. Then we will need someone to read then distribute the information. Australia’s archives still hold many secrets.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 04 30 at 08:44 AM • permalink
- #19
More Spooky The Dan SpeaksAs most Americans know, without balance or fairness, journalistic zeal is little more than a media vendetta, which is how Memogate will be rightfully remembered.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 04 30 at 09:02 AM • permalink
- OT?
Albert Hofmann, father of drug LSD, dies in Switzerland“I produced the substance as a medicine. … It’s not my fault if people abused it,” he once said.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 04 30 at 09:07 AM • permalink
“I was pleased I wasn’t being mortarboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an Al-Jazeera cameraman, for instance,” he said.
Hey, that’s a bit harsh!
Those were two of the best scenarios we’d ever devised. Well, those and the strategic goat kicking incident in Iran.
The Butler CBS Journalist ruse was different.
This time we had full Congressional denial, free use of desert zones G and Y at Area 51 for filming locations and even some of those neat magnetic swipe passes for the elevators and roller coaster transport facilities. The VRWC minionettes worked tirelessly for weeks shoveling sand into dunes and swinging their hips in those camel suits. Special mention goes to kae’s mom for the hand knitted palm trees. And to the guys of course, who blew the whole set flat again with the studio fans. Haw. All in good fun!
Anyway, Butler was completely duped with the fake ring tones and all, he really thought he was kidnapped in Iraq! Well, he did until wronwright had to get all bossy and yell “splice! Try to make something of yourself and go get me my hawk and trowel. If we sling enough mud, some of it might stick!”
How was I supposed to know he was speaking metaphorically?
stackja—Australia was throwing American commies out windows? Good onya!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 04 30 at 10:39 AM • permalink
Actually Mr. Butler is right about one thing – mortarboarding is cruel and humiliating. Not only is it the stupidest-looking hat on God’s green earth, but it won’t even stay on your head properly unless you’ve got less than half an inch of hair all around, and it has to be anchored with hairpins which poke into your skull.
Burn ‘em all, say I.
Posted by Sonetka’s Mom on 2008 04 30 at 11:00 AM • permalink
#29 Sonetka’s Mom: You’re sure right about that! It’s a ridiculous looking hat, although I suppose it might be a convenient place to put your can of soda pop or your bottle of apple juice, temporarily. And what’s with the silly tassle? I pulled on mine, and no lights came on, no servants came a-runnin’, nothin’.
“They were looking for an arms cachet.”
“Arms cachet”–the Next Big Thing in Basra.
Alongside “Semi-Literacy cachet”.Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2008 04 30 at 02:21 PM • permalink
I don’t know what a mortarboard is, but send ole Buttie around and I’ll be happy to smack him over the head with a baseplate…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 04 30 at 02:42 PM • permalink
“I was pleased I wasn’t being mortarboarded in Guantanamo…
And he’s celebrating by doing a typical lefty pompous circus dance.
Posted by Mary in LA on 2008 04 30 at 02:51 PM • permalink
I am sure he could find work amongst some of the Jaish Al Mahdi creeps we ran out of Basrah.
I guess Butler was a case of premptive Stockholm Syndrome.
Posted by Major John on 2008 04 30 at 03:06 PM • permalink
Wwwwwaaaassssssuuuuuuppppppp!
Ow!
Wwwwwaaaassssssuuuuuuppppppp!
Ee-youch!
Wwwwwaaaassssssuuuuuuppppppp!
AAAAAGGHH!!
Wwwwwaaaassssssuuuuuuppppppp!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHH! NO! NO! STOP! I can’t take it any more! I’ll talk, I’ll talk!
(whimper…)Posted by Mary in LA on 2008 04 30 at 05:19 PM • permalink
Who knew that they make you wear a graduation cap (aka, a mortarboard) at Gitmo. The horror, the horror.
Posted by David Crawford on 2008 04 30 at 06:20 PM • permalink
“I was pleased I wasn’t being mortarboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an Al-Jazeera cameraman, for instance,” he said.
Surely something happened, and that isn’t his full quote. It should have been something like: “I was pleased I wasn’t being mortarboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an Al-Jazeera cameraman, or having my freakin’ head lopped off by some muslim dick with a big sword, for instance,” he said.
Yeah, that’s what he probably meant to say.
- By a gang of jihadis he was snared,
And once free, Butler said “I’d been scared!
Gitmo’s ‘Graduate’treatment is famous,
For it’s ill-fitting caps and gowns heinous,
Thank goodness that torment I was spared!”I paid a lot of good money to be mortarboarded. I feel so…dirty.Posted by Infidel Librarian on 2008 04 30 at 06:41 PM • permalink
He meant “plasterboarded” or was it “plasteredboarded”.
Posted by LaVallette on 2008 04 30 at 09:09 PM • permalink
Yeah Dminor, but the Iraqi Army and police control Basra now, and they might not be too keen on a pommie twit who seems to love the brutes the Iraqi Army is fighting. Trained by Americans, the Iraqi Army soldiers are probably better shots than the jihadists.
“Mortarboarded”, “arms cachet”, this guy’s ignorance is truly phenomenal. And where were all those vaunted editors and whatnot that the MSM claims makes their reporting so much better than that of Drudge or your average blogger? One must conclude they were either out to lunch, permanently, or just as pig-ignorant as Butler is.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2008 04 30 at 09:17 PM • permalink
Does this mean that Krudd was Scoreboarded?
Posted by mr creosote on 2008 05 01 at 01:57 AM • permalink
I was pleased I wasn’t being mortarboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an Al-Jazeera cameraman, for instance,” he said.
Don’t make statements when plastered.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 05 01 at 05:46 AM • permalink
Maybe he was too plastered at the time to understand what he was saying?
Posted by andycanuck on 2008 05 01 at 10:48 AM • permalink
I guess next time I’ll read the comments first before “ctrl-end”ing to the comments box so I won’t appear thick as a brick.
Posted by andycanuck on 2008 05 01 at 10:50 AM • permalink
Butler made it through the first two mortarboarding sessions without cracking. So we decided to give him the third degree.
Posted by Paul Zrimsek on 2008 05 01 at 12:37 PM • permalink
You realize this man’s whole story is a crock, right? Held for two months by religious fanatics who somehow refrained from yacking at GREAT length about how their medieval god wanted his ass, no ransom demands to CBS, no threats… this jerk is so willing to cover for terrorists he could edit the Age…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 05 01 at 02:47 PM • permalink
Mark Steyn