[TonyInOhio]

He gets it. Read the whole thing.

[1Old Pro]

Dan Rather should resign or be fired !!

CBS news should fire Dan Rather for not being absolutely positively certain of the authenticity of these forged documents. We are in the absolute final leg of a Presidential election and Dan Rather rushed to press to get these dociuments on the air because he thought it would potentially help Kerry and hurt Bush. He is blinded by his partisanship and is not fit to be a journalist.

Dan Rather never even looked into where these papers came from. It was his job to be CERTAIN of their authenticity. It's fitting that Rather's career comes to an end under this cloud of his extremist partisanship. He will always be remembered for this. His legacy will be fitting....a reporter who would lie to America if it supported his Left Wing Ideology.

[gopwinsin04]

How dare average citizens question the journalistic authority of the NY Slimes and CBS News! (lol..)

[Lijahsbubbe]

The more basic question is how could a rabble of bloggers, in one day, provide hard core proof of forgery when major news organizations took those documents at face value?

Because we're smarter, and we don't hate George Bush.

[Petronski]

Regarding the question you put in bold, asking that question also means answering it in itself: The CBS producers accepted the documents because they WANTED to run with their story. Questioning the documents too deeply would mean risking 'the story.'

As to whether they knew they were frauds or whether they didn't want to find out if they were frauds, well, I can't answer that. I hope we find out, though, if CBS presented them while knowing they were forged.

Either way, wow, what a stake through the heart of the 'awol' bullshit.

[Maria S]

"Kerry is likely to face questions about who was responsible for the forgeries..."


I hate to rain on the parade, but I'm guessing MSM will avoid asking very many questions, and not ask Kerry or his group at all. If MSM DOES ask anything, it will be spun so as to appear that they know nothing about nothing, or else the papers they were given came from republican sources. I am truly fed up with NBCABCCBS, but I figure things are only going to get worse before the election! Thank goodness for the internet (especially FR), Fox News, and talk radio.

[mrsmith]

"how could a rabble of bloggers, in one day, provide hard core proof of forgery when major news organizations took those documents at face value?"

Because the internet has Free Republic.

[theDentist]

We should start it as: "Senator Kerry, John Sasso was the man who leaked plagarism accusations against Joe Biden in '88, attempted to put the blame on Gephardt's campaign, and had to resign from the Dukakis team. He's now a senior aide on your campaign. Did John Sasso leak the forged documents to Dan Rather?"

[PMCarey]

Which expert looked at the documents? How closely?

I somewhat understand the desire to protect the identity of sources, though if that source is providing fake documents I would think they have fortfeited their "right" to confidentiality. However, I cannot understand why you would need to keep the identity of the experts hidden.

Unless:

• There were no experts
• The experts did a poor job and would now recant if pressed

[jordan8]

Newsrooms under siege

[haywoodwebb]

". . .The newsman said he values the Internet as a research tool, but he finds some stories published on the Web -- scandals especially -- play too fast and loose with the facts.
"I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet. I expect that to develop in the fairly near future," he said.
        --Walter Cronkite - Aug. 16, 2004

I wonder how Walter feels about his boy wonder these days?

[safisoft]

Just a thought... since CBS has shown themselves to be without morals, there is a way they could get out of this still - and it may be the goal of the DNC source of these forgeries.

1. Admit the documents posted on the Internet were "sexed up" to look more authentic.

2. Produce the "actual" documents which are word-for-word the same, but this time in much better visible condition (and this time forged on an actual IBM Selectric).

3. Make sure this new set of forgeries can pass a document examination by a 8th grader.

I think that CBS delaying their retraction may have some thinking along this line. If this were the case, it would be the double-switch and elevate the charges against Bush to a more tuned in audience.

Just a thought. Carville and Begala are not stupid, although they may look it.

[cyncooper]

While it would be astonishing if anyone inside the Kerry organization had a hand in them, it is a question that will be asked.

"Astonishing"?

Anatomy of a Forgery

excerpt:

"More than a couple people heard about the papers," says the DNC staffer. "I've heard that they ended up with the Kerry campaign, for them to decide to how to proceed, and presumably they were handed over to 60 Minutes, which used them the other night.

[alloysteel]

CBS kind of whacked the hornet's nest with this "story", didn't they? It may have taken weeks to let the truth filter out on the authenticity of the "documents" quoted, but the first known glaring error was the wrong type font - These were obviously a type font NEVER found on any typwriters from that era. In fact, these were Word document fonts, and the memos were composed on a word processor. Superscripts are a highly unlikely enhancement on typewriters, and certainly not reduced size font superscripts.

[Tax Government]

Why did bloggers (and FR in particular) jump on this with a vengeance? Because:

1) We did NOT spend the last few decades watching only the pablum that comes from CBS and other propagandists; and

2) We understand some dimensions of document forensics -- enough to know there is a mountain of evidence in what CBS passed off as aged docs.

[VoteHarryBrowne2000]

This whole election cycle is being influenced by forces outside of the MSM and the liberal elite establishments. They don't like it but they can't change it.

I'd look for a flurry of law suits against Freerepublic and other bloggers for using copyrighted materials, etc. The only way that the left can win is to silence the growing majority of people in this country who question their authority and their loyalty.

[js1138]

"The spacing is not just similar -- it is identical in every respect. Notice that the date lines up perfectly, all the line breaks are in the same places, all letters line up with the same letters above and below, and the kerning is exactly the same. And I did not change a single thing from Word's defaults; margins, type size, tab stops, etc. are all using the default settings. The one difference (the "th" in "187th" is slightly lower) is probably due to a slight difference between the Mac and PC versions of the Times New Roman font, or it could be an artifact of whatever process was used to artificially "age" the document. (Update: I printed the document and the "th" matches perfectly in the printed version. It's a difference between screen and printer fonts.)"

[Bryan24]

There is a GREAT point inside this article. Kerry and his campaign are sitting silent this morning.

WHY?

Any, and I mean, ANY competant campaigner would be positioning themselves for the fallout from memo-gate. Kerry and his people are completely silent. This is a FATAL delay.

As soon as the word "forgeries" was floated on the networks, Kerry's people should have been staking out their position that "as far as we know, these are genuine." They haven't caveated anything.

Right now, Kerry's camp is THE NUMBER ONE SUPSECT for a forgery. The silence is deafening.

[Leatherneck_MT]

The problem with the Ancient Media is that they are so used to people in America only listening to them.

While they have been lulled into their left leaning complacency, the Warriors of the Right have been gaining ground and tunnelling under their positions.

This recent fiasco at CBS has a parallel in history. The battle of the Crater at Petersburg.

Union troops from the mining states tunnelled under the Confederate positions and detonated a huge mine.

However, unlike the Confederate Soldiers, CBS has not been able to and will not be able to mount an effective defense for the follow on forces.

[Dick Vomer]

Gee, I don't understand how this could happen.,,?? How could journalists let "dedicated" amateurs stump them and kick their a#@.

Think back freepers... way back to college and who were the guys and gals that were "majoring" in journalism.

Basically they were right behind PE majors (they were wussies or wimps) or were "smart" jocks looking for the easy "A"... in general.

In the food chain they look up to public school teachers but are about even with "women's studies" or "(enter-race)" studies. All which stand on the heads of gay/lesbian studies....LMAO.

They're to stupid to "produce" anything, to lazy to work but generally like to sit around, drink beer, talk about "issues" and back them up with snippets of facts that are shaded to support their "stories".

Finally when they graduate they delude themselves into "wanting to help people"... when all they want to do is move from local rag newspaper, to larger circulation newspaper, to regional magazine, to national magazine to television...(local) then regional cable finally to the big three.... By that time their nose is so brown and lips so swollen from firm application to the hind quarters of the other "journalist" ahead of them that it begins to look like a giant centipede crawling up Mt. Everest... with the top 3 "anchors" sitting on the summit.... and thousands of little beads coming out of their rear end.... (nice mental picture).

Since the "libs" dominate the networks they will never risk the money, fame or "awards for journalism" that are annually bestowed on the most creative a#@-kissers. It's just like the plagarist in the ny times, and washington posts... they are so stupid they can't even do their own Nexux search.

Free Republic rules!!!!

[RippleFire]

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