Liberty's Blog

White Washing Rathergate

There CBS Rathergate report has two items of contention bias issue and the claim that the forgeries are proven. CBS and Dan Rathers bias should be obvious to any of observer, and is taken for granted by this occassional viewer. However, it seems odd that the commisioned investigation could concievably report that there could be any doubt that the doccuments in question could be anything else but forgerys and fakes.

Some critics said the documents were most probably forgeries prepared on a modern word processer. Other critics questioned whether Killian would have - or could have - written them.

Roger Simon also finds that this might be the crucial issue.

In the aftermath of the Rathergate Report, that is one of the things I am trying to figure out. To be clear, I am not talking about the bias issue. Although I assume CBS was biased (what news outlet isn't?), legally there has to be a true smoking gun for proof beyond a reasonable doubt and there may not have been one here. But in the real world, nobody takes the lack of bias claim seriously anyway. It's just silly. Sure, CBS is biased. So is Fox News and so am I. Onwards.

The lie that concerns me is the one that might actually have some public effect--that there was no proof that the National Guard documents were forgeries. It's amazing Thornburgh and Boccardi could assert this with a straight face, considering their own expert--the only one they cite in their own appendix--says the exact opposite, just as every other reputable typography expert does without any of them being contradicted except in the most inept manner. And even those few paltry contradictions have failed completely and vanished from view. That the Bush guard documents are authentic is about as likely as a Vermeer being painted by blind monkeys--no, less likely. It's beyond "reasonable doubt." It's no doubt (unless you believe some Vietnam era National Guard officer took a time machine forward to the days of Microsoft Word 7.0 to fill out the documents and then returned.)

posted by Liberty @ 7:54 PM