Sorry, Mr. Roff. If you have been following this story completely, you KNOW, and you should be honest about it: The chances that these documents were produced by anything other than a word processor less than 15 years old is less than the probability that a frog's DNA would look like OJ's.
This is no small issue.
Darn tootin'! This accounts for the ire of many of us.
It is unusual for a contemporary U.S. presidential campaign to give as much attention to the military service of the candidates. ... Blather...
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The documents, which rather neatly tie up the many allegations made against Bush by the Democrats over the years, are on the surface too neat a package to have surfaced so late in Bush's political career -- which began in 1978 -- to not immediately be suspect.
So now ASK THE REAL QUESTIONS! WHO DID IT AND WHY!
Even the Democrats appear persuaded that they are forgeries. Several prominent party operatives, including former Al Gore press aide Chris Lehane, have suggested they were fabricated by senior White House adviser Karl Rove as an artful political dirty trick.
Right ... Perpetrated on poor ol'Dan who felt simply forced to release this slanderous garbage.
Unfortunately CBS and its news anchorman Dan Rather have added to the suspicions by building a stone wall of increasing size around the documents in an attempt to fend off questions about them.<>
This would be a good time to state that if it were not for the NEW MEDIA watchdogs like FR and talk radio and the blogosphere, he would NEVER have had this type of pressure exerted in time to keep this screed from possibly totally changing the election. There have been other flippant Old Media stories which did just that, and they are still trying the Same Old ...
Rather dug in his heels quite deeply on Friday's network news broadcast. He explained that whether the documents were forgeries -- he says they are not and that they were given to CBS by a credible source -- is not the issue; the issue is the questions they raise.
This, of course, is something of an inherent contradiction, since the issues raised depend on the documents to suggest their validity.
... Duh... Sometimes I have to express surprise that somebody in the lamestream media actually gets it. It seems to happen so rarely I've come to expect simple further obfuscation. This is one of those times that someone from Old Media actually is expressing intelligence.
CBS's assertions that the authenticity of the documents was verified by its own outside experts have been called into question ...
as have the quality of "expert" that they consulted and the stupidity of their whole staff.
... by experts retained by the other news networks,
WHO HAVE ADDED NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE TO THE INFORMATION EASILY FOUND ON FREEREPUBLIC.COM AND THE BLOGS EARLY ON.
... while its explanation of charges that the technology to produce those documents was in fact available in 1972 and 1973 does not stand up under closer scrutiny, at least as far as these specific documents are concerned.
Nothing short of a successful search for the typewriter on which they were typed -- shades of Alger Hiss and Whitaker Chambers -- can at this point affirm the authenticity of documents that have given "Black Rock" a "black eye."
Sorry, Mr.Roff, but the "black eye" does not begin and end at CBS. This is clearly just a surrogate for all the Old Media's problems. CBS and Rather were ripe for the taking, but AP, Reuters, NYSlimes, LASlimes, B.Globe, and all the FRAUDcasters are just as vulnerable. I have to say that POSSIBLY the W.Post can survive this, along with FOX, IBD, and the WSJ, but any of the other OldMedia actors are clearly in jeopardy.
There is, however, a larger issue at stake -- a considerably larger issue involving freedom of the press, the presidency and the integrity of the U.S. electoral process.
Lest this be consigned to the trash bin as meaningless hyperbole, consider that, if the documents were in fact forged, they were produced for only one reason: to sway the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
This is, to use the vernacular, a big deal indeed.
In the age of three and only three broadcast news outlets, such an action might have succeeded. In the age of the Internet, the blogger, the chat room, the cable news channel and the .pdf file, such chicanery is much less easy to pull off -- leaving CBS exposed to all sorts of charges that put the entire U.S. news industry at risk.
Anybody who dares to suggest that it was NOT the intention of Blather and CBiaS Fraudcasting network to damage President Bush and the Republicans is flat out lying. It is not meaningless hyperbole to state that FR and the rest of the internet may well have saved this election from being fatally swayed by FRAUD of CBS and the DNC
....If they are a deliberate attempt to deceive, to sway even a small portion of the electorate in what is expected to be the closest presidential election in a century, then CBS and the media are being used for nefarious purposes. The First Amendment guarantees are, to be sure, a constitutional right -- but they are also a trust that must be wielded wisely lest they be infringed upon.
It is important that a thorough, independent and, most importantly, open investigation into the provenience of the documents be conducted.
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I have little quibble with the remainder... the investigation must proceed and prosecute the responsible parties. He ought to have added one last paragraph:
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a bit over the top - i think - but you make some good points