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well heres a question to ask yourself, if they content of the memo was false, then president bush would have been able to immediatly say.."that memo must be forged because its contents
dont make any sense"

yet instead he kept silent..the only person to comment was laura bush who said "if the memo was forged thats awful"...

my question is..why was there any doubt in her mind, why did she need to use the word "if" she should have been sure the memo was forged.

BTW, im sorry the media misrepresented that event you were at..you must have felt quite betrayed by the media. And I do not doubt the media is capable of misrepresentation. But this sort of misrepresentation would be on a much higher scale, see how much media play this story has gotton.

Bush refrained from commenting on the memo, in my opinion, because he knew he didn't need to say anything. By staying silent, he denied the Democrats an opportunity to grow legs on a decidedly lumpy story. Laura Bush was as smart in saying "if," because here again, any other choice of wording would have been construed as an accusation of deliberate falsification. That would have started a whole new controversy that would have given the National Guard (non)story more legs.

You give the mainstream media a lot more credibility than I do. Quite a lot more. The media is not only capable of misrepresentation, it engages in it often, from small local stories to big national ones. Reasons vary from personal agendas, to laziness (the most common), to the seeking and manufacturing of sensationalism in order to foster notoriety. Often as not the reporter turns in a fair story, but the editor(s), much higher on the totem pole, delete parts of the story they don't like on the pretense that they're not relevant. I compare it to a picture window that looks out on a vista of mountains, a lake, and a town. Close the shades in such a way as to only see the town, and the view out the window tells an entirely different story than if the shades were arranged in such a way as to only show the mountains, or to only reveal the lake.

I have worked in one small way or another in print media, and a bit of broadcast media, for more than two decades. If you don't feel betrayed by the media, it's because you don't know any better. Thank goodness for the "new media" of the internet and talk radio -- it pulls the curtains wide on our picture window view of the world. It helps shine the light of truth on an institution that has gone unchallenged -- and been utterly trusted by naive and credible Americans -- for far too long.

I actually started college as a journalism major. I changed my area of emphasis the day my major professor guaranteed me that "objectivity" was possible. It is NOT. While I did not understand many things (I was VERY liberal at the time) I was smart enough to realize what they were trying to get us to believe was actually a very scary BIG LIE. At a very young and naive age, I at least had the integrity to not buy into it. Thank God for small favors.

We were taught to write stories and manipulate quotes to fit a coherent storyline. And that manipulation WITHOUT QUESTION occurs "on a much higher scale." Bernard Goldberg's books Bias and Arrogance are excellent explaining this dynamic within the press. Please understand that most of the time it is not intentional, but instead part of that "big lie of objectivity." If you haven't read them, they are well worth your time...even if you are a liberal. They will help you see it where it exists, both left and right.

We all bring the "bias" of our own life experiences to the table. If you do not recognize that in yourself, you will become blind to everything else. You cease to be fair and you become an elitist of the worst sort. The best a journalist can hope for is to be fair.

BTW, im [sic] sorry the media misrepresented that event you were at..you must have felt quite betrayed by the media.

Our feelings don't matter here. As conservatives, we understand that the press is not kind to our pov. President Bush and his team understand this as well. We're ok with that.

The great irony of your statement saying they should have said immediately that the memo must be faked because it contents don't make any sense is that if you read the Cooper memo, that is exactly what Rove was doing. To paraphrase: Hey, Mr. Cooper, Wilson's story doesn't make any sense because the VP didn't send him. When asked who did, Rove said that apparently his wife works for the CIA and she suggested he go. Now...think about it. Isn't that exactly what you just said the administration should have done on the CBS memos?