Imagine this scenario. Fox News reports that they have documents that show that then Lt. Kerry was negotiating with the North Vietnamese government during the Paris Peace talks and was asking for suggestions on how to embarrass the current administration. Later it comes to pass that the docs were forged and that Fox was clearly duped. Instead of admitting their mistake Roger Ailes comes out and says that there is not conclusive evidence that they are forgeries and the greater truth is that Kerry did meet with North Vietnamese officials and it is incumbent on him to answer whether or not he asked for suggestions on how to embarrass the administration and to also release all his records. Do you think there would be a single MSM outlet that would pick up that type of BS excuse and try to defend Fox.Would anyone say, “Yes the documents may be a hoax but the greater truth is more important then the fact that Fox tried to pass fraudelent documents off as authentic” Call me cynical, but I doubt it.

Statement by the President of CBS News, Andrew Heyward:

“We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of coroborating [sic] evidence from people in a position to know. Having said that, given all the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that’s what we are doing.”

If this is the statement then I note the following change in position…Heyward says that “memos are accurate” not that they are real. They are planning to stand by the story even if they are forgeries.

I do not believe that CBS can afford to admit that they are fakes because they become open to a Justice Department investigation into their role in the dissemination of knowingly forged official government correspondence.

Howard Kurtz, who has just kicked tushie on this story since Day One, is on CNN now, and confirms that Rather is interviewing 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox, former secretary to Lt. Col. Jerry Killian.

Hassling an 86-year-old woman for the Greater Truth.

The memos are STILL FAKE, Dan!

After all, don’t you know who he is?????????????

No Dodging Dan, you don’t work on a story for FIVE YEARS and wait until the last minute to authenticate documents and you don’t treat them like The Manhattan Project and dole out 1-2 here, 1-2 there for plausible deniability.(sp)

Roger, you just can’t write this stuff.

It’s like Chicago aldermen – they get busted on the nickle-and-dime envelope stuffing.

If I’m looking at prison time, I’m going out big.

Rick B says a “consensus” is typically only 50% of the population; with 60% of the population you have Mass Accord.

When you’ve got only 27% believing something, functionally you’ve got no one.

(That might be an exaggeration–if Rick turns up he can weigh in. But if it is an exaggeration, it’s not by much. This is why I always say we need 50 to 60% of the country to hold a shared narrative about Vietnam. We don’t need any more than that to be at peace over the issue. Majority rule, remember?!)

The Link.

I agree – the WH can just sit and smirk. WayMoreThanRatherStupid hung himself with this. They worked on a story for four or five years and decided to go on the air with it using preposterously forged documents.

RatherMoronic has had a vendetta going for any and all people named Bush for nearly two decades now. Did he expect the WH to say, “Yo, Danny Boy, notfuhnuttin’ and juss between us guys, but doze docs you sent ovah ahh pretty badly forged. You sure you wanna use doze tings?” Rather called and asked the equivalent of, “Has the President stopped beating Laura yet?” and expected an answer?

Rove took one look at those docs and gave out clear instructions, “Give copies of these to anyone who asks, just make sure the CBS fax info is along the top edge there – we wanna make sure credit is given where credit is due. After that, just say, ‘The President has an Honorable Discharge’ and sit back and wait for the fireworks.”

Don’t worry. There’s invariably 20-30% of any given population that will agree with any given idea. But the world still turns.