Poor Dan. In his blind ambition to make President Bush look bad [Note: TheMediaReport.com has reported this before] and to boost Democrats and John Kerry, Rather aired a 60 Minutes II segment on Wednesday (9/8/04) featuring documents that are obviously fraudulent. Some important facts:

1. Upon close examination, the documents are obviously bogus. See: this, this, this, this, this, and this.

2. Two weeks before airing the segment, Dan Rather interviewed the son and former wife of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, whose name is on the bogus papers. Both individuals told Rather they did not know of Killian ever keeping such documents. Yet Rather did not include this in his report on Wednesday. Read this astonishing NewsMax.com report.

3. Rather tried to deflect attacks against the authenticity of the memos by saying the people attacking his credibility were "partisan political operatives." This is laughable, considering that the key subject of his interview on Wednesday was a man named Ben Barnes. Barnes, who claimed he pulled strings in the 1960's to gain Bush a spot in the Texas Guard, is currently a Vice Chair of the Kerry campaign! (Click the link and see for yourself!) Can you get more "partisan political operative" than that? Can you imagine Rather letting a Republican get away with such obvious chicanery? Puh-leeze.

4. A former Texas Air National Guard colonel, Bobby Hodges, challenges the authenticity of the memos. See this and this.

 

TheMediaReport.com says ... Allow me to steal from Laura Ingraham. "If you're going to forge typewritten documents, you might want to use an actual typewriter."