All kidding aside, have the folks at CBS lost their collective minds?
I'm really surprised that CBS decided to hang their claim of authenticity on Mr. Matley, who they claim examined all 4 documents, but Matley has stated that he examined the signature only, and that he was not qualified to evaluate the authenticity of the documents themselves.
Okay class, It's time for an essay question. Compare and contrast the following statements. First from the Washington Post:
“There’s no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them,” Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are “copies” that are “far removed” from the originals
And now from CBS:
Two of the examiners, Mssrs. Matley and Pierce, attested and continue to attest to their belief in the documents' authenticity. (see attachments 1 and 2) Two others, Ms. Will and Ms. James, appeared on a competing network yesterday, where they misrepresented their conversations and communication with CBS News. In fact, they assessed only one of the four documents used in the report, and while one of them raised a question about one aspect of that one document, they did not raise substantial objections or render definitive judgment on the document. Ultimately, they played a peripheral role in the authentication process and deferred to Mr. Matley, who examined all four of the documents used.
So, who do we believe? Mr. Matley, or what CBS says about Mr. Matley?
The entire CBS statement is riddled with half truths and outright lies. To date, nobody has been able to reproduce the document on any typewriter available at the time, and the closest efforts took hours of work by an experienced operator.
And it still didn't match because no machine of the day was capable of variable kerning.
What are they thinking over there? It's becoming painfully obvious that they just don't get it yet. Thanks to the net, memory now lasts longer than last night's newscast. You can't replace the lies of last night with new lies today, and expect us not to notice.
But what is even more amazing is the underlying philosophy of their defense.
Rather, when interviewed on the street the other day expressed shock and anger that folks were focussing on the authenticity of the memos, rather than the answers to the questions they raised.
In a way, this presaged CBS's statement today, which basically boiled down to "Even if the memos are fake, the story is still true. So it doesn't matter!"
Ain't that amazing? If you believe the story is true, it doesn't matter that you faked evidence to prove it. Just imagine for a moment if this happened in a trial. Say we all know Bubba shot the jukebox, but nobody saw it. We found Bubba in the bar with a busted jukebox, but the gun was missing. Now we all know Bubba shot the jukebox because that idiot from out of town played B-17, and that was our song, it was his song, but it's o-o-over. It's happened before, but Bubba got smart and got rid of the gun before anybody saw him.
Can we plant a gun on Bubba's comatose corpus to make sure Sheriff Andy can keep him locked up for a week or two until he sobers up? (Bubba, that is; Sheriff Andy only drinks iced tea, two sugars, no lemon.) And if we did, wouldn't the editor of the East Bumfuzzle Weekly Gazette go absolutely apoplectic with rage at the injustice of it all?
OK, folks, this show is over, or at least it should be. The memos are indisputably faked, and anyone who still believes otherwise is blinded by partisanship.
The irony of it all, as Barry pointed out in the comments of yesterday's post, is that there's no bombshell here even if the memos are authentic. A politician pulled strings to keep his son out of Viet Nam.
Oh the horror!
And Bush asked his superiors how he could work around drill requirements to allow him to participate in a political campaign.
If that curls your toes, you don't want to hear about how nuclear reactor operaters gamed the Operational Readiness and Safeguards Exams we underwent each deployment cycle. Your heart might not be able to take it.
Posted by Rich at September 15, 2004 11:12 PM | TrackBack