What a great response!

3 cheers to Jim Geraghty over at the Kerry Spot:

The least compelling comment on the Dan Rather news, sent to me by Jan, a Kerry Spot reader: "Just tell me why it is worse for Dan Rather to rely on forged documents for a news report that was largely consistent with the facts than for our government to go to war on forged and false information. Many thousands of deaths later, where is the outrage?"

Ah, where to begin?

First, the memo wasn't "largely consistent with the facts." It was made up by Bill Burkett, who had an axe to grind against the President and the Texas Air National Guard for a long time. The memo was a cheap attempt to use a dead man, Killian, as a witness against the president. Any fair news organization would have recognized that Burkett was an unreliable source, and any fair news organization would have reported that its own experts said the memos were fake.

Any marginally competent news organization would have said early on, "Gee, these memos from 1972 look at awful lot like Microsoft Word."

Any news organization that wasn't working overtime to defeat Bush would have admitted that the memo was fake within a day or two, instead of stonewalling for weeks.

As for the comparison to the Iraq war - was the information in the case for war forged? Was it forged by the U.S. government? Was the information - I presume Jan is referring to the WMD suspicions - something that an outside source like the government should have been able to determine was wrong quickly? Did we have a large amount of reliable information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons systems? Was the Iraqi government full of individuals willing to inform the U.S. government about these systems? Or were there some complications in gathering reliable information in a police state ruled by fear?

But I suppose to folks like that, their anger at the Bush administration over the war means that all other wrongdoings pale in comparison, and thus can be forgiven because they are, in their eyes, ‘largely consistent with the facts.’ Except, you know, where they’re made up.