Spoons notes that Dan Rather’s mea culpa on the forged Bush documents is too little too late. Indeed it is a pathetic excuse at passing blame. The documents weren’t just forged, they were crudely forged in such a way that anyone with a copy of Word could see the forgery in a grand total of five minutes – yet Rather kept flogging the story for weeks.
Rather was either completely blind to the obvious or was engaging as a partisan shill – in any event he deserves to lose his job for this ridiculous story.
I don’t understand why CBS doesn’t give a full accounting of the story. Sounds like that would be a good story in itself. The story behind the story, that kind of thing. From a journalistic point of view, not that I fully know what that is, its a story that needs to be told.
Kind of crazy how the right reacts to Dan Rather’s misinterpretation of questionable evidence with a call for his head on a platter, yet when it comes to Bush’s misinterpretation of questionable intelligence information that led the nation into a war, you fall over each other defending him. Only in the conservative mind could sloppy journalism be a greater threat to civilization that sloppy intelligence interpretation that leads to “pre-emptive war.”
Somehow that “sloppy intelligence interpretation” was shared by 14 other nations on the UN Security Council.
Who shared Rather and CBS’s “interpretation?”
Sav, obviously the experts they looked to for authentication of the documents believed CBS’s interpretation. This was most likely a clever ploy by Bush administration hacks, perhaps Karl Rove himself, to provide real information with a phony signature to an anti-Bush news organization, hoping they’d take the bait and provide them the opportunity to embarrass the news purveyor. If this is the case, I have to give the GOP props for another successful public relations coup that did its job….controlling the debate and keeping Bush-unfriendly headlines off the front page. You know, like the headlines showing the consequences we’re dealing with for trusting Bush when convinced us we had to disarm a madman by means of “pre-emptive war.”
Mark… CBS ignored the experts that tried to warn them about the documents and then found some new experts, even going so far as to mislead one of these experts about the documents so that he could “authenticate” them over the phone.
There is a hell of a lot more wrong with the documents than just a phony signature… these were such obvious forgeries that one does have to wonder if the forger wanted them to be found out. Dream up whatever conspiracy theories you want to about Karl Rove… CBS ultimately decided to put this garbage on the air despite all the warnings, not Karl Rove.
obviously the experts they looked to for authentication of the documents believed CBS’s interpretation.
Like who? As Watcher mentioned, two of their experts who looked at them were ignored. The guy CBS threw out there as the documents’ only backer, Marcel Matley, only judged one signature on one document to be authentic and said he couldn’t authenticate the documents in general. Yet CBS portrayed him as having verified their authenticity. CBS was reduced to bringing in a former typewriter repairman to claim with tortured logic that one typewriter COULD produce such documents. That was their evidence. That and their “unimpeachable source” who was either Bill Burkett or the guy CBS and Burkett are still hiding.
This was most likely a clever ploy by Bush administration hacks, perhaps Karl Rove himself…
Sure. Bill Burkett is now a Karl Rove plant.
I’m starting to believe McCauliffe might be, but not Burkett.
The CBS document story collapsed so quickly and the documents were so obviously forged, that they cannot credibly say they made a mistake.
CBS was not misled. CBS was caught.