"Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a "60 Minutes Wednesday" story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question-and their source-vigorously."

"...re-examine" so they examined them once and found them authentic and legitiamte, right? Then why the re-examine?

"And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

And boy did we pray alot during those days!

"Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically."

Um.... 'vouching for them journalistically'???? So they would vouch for them otherways? Legally? Morally? Realistically? Virtually? Why the special descriptor?"

"I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers."

How could they have been misled on a question? Wouldn't the answer have been misleading? Weren't THEY asking the questions? And what does source have anything to do with authenticity? Instead, they shift the blame to a 'confidential source' when they should have authenticated the documents right from the start.

"That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where-if I knew then what I know now-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question."

"...raised in the public..." change to read: Those damn blogs and that cursed Internet!

"...as it was aired..." Right. We would have still have talked about the documents, but we would have had a 3pt arial font display a standard legal disclaimer following the show's closing credits.

"But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism. "

Did I read this right... that the error was made in the tradition of CBS News? And that last bit, "without fear". So what was the producer's thought right before he aired the bit... "I'm not scared of anyone's rebuttal... we're C-B-Friggin-S.


"Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully. "

... except of course for breaking a story that supports our liberal beliefs!

And what's up with 'fairly' and 'favoritism' being used. Making a false acusation can be a crime. This has nothing to do with fair. It's the proliferation of a lie that attempts to manipulate a federal election.