That claim Barnes made? It was sworn testimony, an affidavit in a legal case. It still might be a lie, but it's not just a casual claim with no consequences should it be proven false. It's still evidence.

I don't know what you mean when you say Barnes was "convicted of fraud at some point". He was accused of bribery in the 1971 Sharpestown scandal, along with many other Democrats in the Texas state government, but no charges were brought against him.

William Arkin was one of the only journalists to write pieces that attempted to paint an accurate view of Israel's damage to Lebanon during last year's war.

"I just returned from a week touring Beirut and southern Lebanon, and from visiting northern Israel.

What struck me about the bombing...was that you could see the destruction and completely misread what it meant. In Beirut, the destruction in reality is efficient and impressive. The destruction in Israel, on the other hand, is random and scattered. When Hezbollah rockets were fired on Israel, landing meant success.

So here is the truth: Israel did not do anything close to what it was capable of doing. Hezbollah did all it could...

...Israel is Israel. That is why the non-aligned countries condemned "Israeli aggression in Lebanon" this weekend, befuddled about Lebanon and Hezbollah: Such an easy target...

...Only a very short drive from the neighborhoods of southern Beirut though, you are back to bustling boulevards; a few neighborhoods over and there are luxury stores and five star hotels. Beyond the “Hezbollah” neighborhoods, the city is normal. Electricity flows just as it did before the fighting. The Lebanese sophisticates are glued to their cell phones. Even an international airport that was bombed is reopened.

...Israel had the means to impart greater destruction, but that does not mean intrinsically that it is more brutal. If Hezbollah had bigger rockets or more accurate ones, it would have done not only the same, but undoubtedly more...

...the fact that one can drive a short distance from Dresden-like south Beirut and return to modern life itself should signal that this is something very different: Israeli bombers did not fly over Beirut and unleash loads of bombs. Each individual building was the quarry; the intent was there, and the technology existed, to spare the rest...

...Israel didn’t bomb the Lebanese electrical power grid, Lebanese water or sewage infrastructure, Lebanon’s “refinery,” hospitals or schools. Yes some were damaged in in the fighting, but the fact is, there was some attempt to discriminate, Lebanon wasn’t systematically destroyed."

He was condemned for this, but he held his ground.

Good for him.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/09/shock_and_awe_in_lebanon.html

You're right, Avram, I thought he was one of those convicted - I should have checked.

You probably don't think Front page is a credible source, but FWIW:

By the late 1990s Barnes had become a millionaire lobbyist working for GTech, a company that operated lotteries in 37 states including Texas. The Texas lottery was losing money, in part because of a sweetheart deal in which Barnes received 3.5 cents for every ticket sold – more than $3 million per year. When the Texas lottery commission re-bid GTech’s contract, the company sued and – after buying Barnes out for $23 million – hired a new lobbyist. A fired Texas lottery director sued, claiming that he had taken the fall for GTech because Barnes had a National Guard story embarrassing to then-Governor George W. Bush.

Barnes, facing potential charges of yet more wrongdoing, told his National Guard story in a deposition in a successful effort to politically deflect his own responsibility in this matter. In multiple re-tellings since 1999, the details of Barnes’ story have changed several times. Its gist is Barnes’ claim that when he was the Democratic Lt. Governor he intervened to get Republican Houston Congressman George H.W. Bush’s son George W. into the Texas Air National Guard (alongside the sons of Governor John Connally and Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Democrats). Barnes now says he is “ashamed” of this. Trouble is, George W. Bush began the first of six years’ service in the National Guard in 1968, but Barnes did not become Lt. Governor of Texas until 1969. Barnes has acknowledged that no member of the Bush family sought his help, but claims he was approached by a Bush family friend (who died three years before Barnes began telling his self-serving story).

. . . . Barnes promoted an earlier version of his story in 1999 and 2000 in a clear attempt to damage the presidential campaign of George W. Bush. And Barnes apparently has had the same aim in reviving this story, long ago discredited by an investigation by the liberal Los Angeles Times, in 2004. As CNN reported in 1999, “the Los Angeles Times said it found no evidence that either Bush or his father, former President George Bush, had personally tried to influence or pressure anyone to get the younger Bush a place in the Texas Guard.”

Ben Barnes . . . [was] a co-chairman of John F. Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Barnes, as CBS News reported in June 2004, has made bundled contributions of more than $500,000 to Kerry’s campaign. Barnes owns a home near his friend Kerry’s home in Nantucket on the Massachusetts shore.

For many years Barnes and the lobbying firm he founded in Austin, EntreCorp, have made many millions of dollars by acting as the go-between bringing special interest groups and companies together with highly-placed Democrat officeholders. The Center for Responsive Politics has listed Barnes as the third largest all-around Democratic donor in America 1999-2004.

You're right, I don't trust Front Page. ("the liberal Los Angeles Times")