And what John Howard still does not understand is that nobody cared about their supposed story in the first place. Is this pretense? Or could it be they actually believe skipping a physical thirty years ago could signify anything? That somehow these minutiae justify fraud. This is Bush Derangement Syndrome in full flower.

My point for your readers is that the paper Post has more than the e-version your link references

I agree that the whole "well we should be discussing what was in the memos" argument is redundant at this point.

If the documents are forged, and the only people supporting what was in them are partisans, it is pretty much now a non story.

Also, I think this stuff doesn't make much difference. I think the only people who care whether or not bush showed up for a physical, are people who weren't going to vote for him anyway.

Bill, you're failing to focus on "the truth at the center of documents." Col. Staudt may be now denying that he pressured Killian to sugar coat Bush's record, but as CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said "[i]n a debate this heated, one can hardly expect Gen. Staudt to endorse the point of view that he exerted undue influence." It may be that the document itself was the ONLY source of the allegations of pressure, but isn't Staudt's denial a confirmation of an effort to sugar coat? Shouldn't he be asked whether he really, really REALLY denies it?

I can only explain Howard's comments by blaming instituional madness. Over the years they have surrounded themselves with Mooreites and their brains have melted from all the hot air.

How else can you justify working 5 fricking years on a nothing story...especially since we have an admitted war criminal running for the Democrats.

I suppose it will be too much to expect C-BS to complain that the DNC/Kerry camp had the forgeries for an even longer period of time and they didn't point out they were forged.

Kerry might be missing an opportunity to organize voters to his cause using the 'net, but that doesn't mean that his followers haven't found ways to try to alieniate voters from Bush's cause using the 'net.

The folks at the Whitehouse gave Rather and the DNC the rope and they hanged themselves with it. Enough said.

If I scribble a note that says John Kerry runs over old ladies we would all know that it is false, but by the logic the MSM uses it would be a valid current topic of debate even after being shown to be false.

This is mind boggling.

"At that point, said "60 Minutes" executive Josh Howard, "we completely abandoned the process of authenticating the documents. Obviously, looking back on it, that was a mistake. We stopped questioning ourselves. I suppose you could say we let our guard down."

And what were the results of authenicating the documents at the time they stopped. Experts were saying there were problems with the documents. WaPo should have asked CBS and WH whether CBS actually asked the WH to give an opinion on the authenicity of the documents. CBS claims the WH authenicated the documents by not saying anything about their authenicity. I bet CBS never asked because they knew the WH would not and could not authenicate the documents under the conditions/timeline that CBS presented them. The whole "well, WH didn't raise objects" is their latest excuse to get out of being outed as a political attack on Bush by Rather. This excuse along with the apparent expert shopping brings up questions that WaPo fails to follow up on. I am not a journalist but even I can see that WaPo is still dragging their feet on this. WaPo would probably like it to be a failure of journalistic standards at CBS that occurred at only CBS. If, more probably when, this becomes known as a political attack, then all of MSM is smeared by this scandal.

I think that Pravda article you linked is a reprinted AP piece. For some reason my local small town fishwrap saw fit to print that article a week or so ago.

AP - the American Pravda. How's that for a slogan?

I have a feeling CBS thought that the White House possessed but were concealing the Killian memos, and took the failure to deny as proof of that fact. They likely thought that the Staudt allegations, if true, would be immediately known to Bush, or at least he'd be in a position to call Staudt up and confirm his role.

That still doesn't explain why CBS didn't at least air the concerns of its forensic experts and Killian's family on the initial broadcast. Or why they didn't hire the world's top forensic expert the next day to resolve the matter. Or why they ignored all the top experts dismissed the documents between from Thursday throught that weekend, or put them on the news to address the points raised by CBS' new non-experts, Glennon and Katz.

It also doesn't explain why, if they were convinced of the forgery only after Killian's secretary said they were fakes, they immediately tried to discredit that part of her interview by pointing out that she wasn't a document examiner -- without revealing what all the experts were saying.

I'm still interested as to why Rather, Mapes and the rest of the See BS crowd seems to think it is news that a pilot on his way to an assignment where there are no airplanes for him to fly would skip his flight physical.
Y'all have to pardon this poor ol' country boy for not seeing the nuance involved but Dubya has NEVER DENIED skipping that flight physical. No airplanes to fly means no flying. No flying means no need for a flight physical.
This ain't like brain surgery, if I can figure this out why can't a whole team of highly paid broadcasters?
Dubya must be laughing himself sick over all this. Jerry Killian would no more have cared about whether or not Dubya took that physical than I care about the price of hundred foot yachts, Dubya was going to an ASSIGNMENT WHERE THERE WERE NO AIRPLANES FOR HIM TO FLY.
This is the story that Dan Rather sacrificed the tattered remnants of his, and his networks reputation for. There are no words to express the idiocy.

I love the blame-the-intended-victim conspiracy theories:
1-"Those Dirty Republicans Took Advantage of Our Blind Stupidity and Brazen Hatred of Bush"
2-"It's the White House's Fault Because They Didn't Tell Us They Were Fakes, And If They Had We'd Have Said They're Not Experts Either"
3-"Karl Rove: Evil Genius"
4-"The Story Is True, It's the Facts that are False."
5-"Politics of Personal Distruction Takes Aim At Self"
6-"Dan Ranter Fails To Take Physical After Suffering from Falling Ratings"

Gotta love the irony. MSM calling bloggers biased? They are worried about bias? Who knew?

I guess it's now the Whitehouse's job to do the fact checking for the MSM, so they don't run around making damned fools of themselves.

Rather's star witness, Marian Carr Knox, stated that the Bush's favorable treatment was the subject of office gossip. CBS expects us to disregard Ms. Knox's inconsistant ramblings and accept her proffering 30+ year old "office gossip" as proof of the allegations. We should all move past the fact that they've been working on this non-story for years, and the best they've come up with is water cooler palaver. Since the faked-up memos reflect the subject of actual gossip and speculative rumor, we should focus our attention on that aspect of the story. Hoo boy!

The MSM and the Democrats keep telling us that Bush won't answer the questions surrounding his ANG service. He has answered the questions--they just don't like his answers.

This is all good for Kerry. The more people see of him, the less they like him. As long as this keeps the news coverage off him, his poll numbers don't go down any further.