Dan Rather postmortem - "failure to authenticate"

Much of the MSM/DNC commentary I have seen this month as it relates to Rather makes grudging reference to Rathergate and Rather's "failure to fully authenticate" the memos in question. The MSM/DNC never acknowledges that the memos were forged. It is almost embarrassing to watch the MSM/DNC contort itself into a pretzel as it attempts to spin the scandal into a mere failure to authenticate. "Failure to authenticate" sounds like a careless error of a harried fact checker. A clerical error. An accident. The MSM/DNC would turn a lie into a mere typographical error.

Twenty years ago the MSM/DNC would have achieved its purpose through sheer repetition of the "failure to authenticate" phrase (if the scandal had even seen the light of day in the first place, that is). The MSM/DNC is used to a world where facts disappear down the memory hole by virtue of MSM/DNC's constant repetition of the same lie over and over again. History's version of events would come to look like the standard MSM/DNC line.

Today, we have the power to force the truth into tomorrow's history books. We can make sure that media watchers, voters, average citizens, etc. will know that CBS suffered its downfall because of a forgery, not an accident. Remember these key facts and remind your readers and friends - especially as Rather undergoes his long, painful farewell:

(1) Someone(s) sat down over a period of time and typed lie after lie into the computer. Someone(s) composed the words that would communicate a false, invented, story. This person (or persons) invented an entire story, complete with names, dates, heroes and villains.

(2) Someone(s) forged the signature of a dead military officer onto four separate documents containing those lies (I think there were more than four memos, but only four made it onto the CBS report).

(3) Someone(s) crumpled the forged memos to make them appear old.

(4) The above actions constitute a crime(s), insofar as the forgers were forging official government documents.

(5) The DNC and the Kerry campaign timed their "fortunate son" ad campaign to coincide with the release of the forged memos on CBS.

(6) Without rehashing the rest of the details, CBS and the Kerry campaign sought to benefit from criminal actions and, to a certain extent, almost certainly acted in concert with those who created the initial forgery - either in the timing of the public release, the placing of the forged documents into CBS' hands or otherwise. The full extent of that cooperation may never be known.

Only when repeating the darkest details of this mess do we lose the innocuous image of a mere "failure to authenticate." The real image of a disturbed individual(s) sitting at a computer carefully inventing lies should put to rest any spin that the MSM/DNC should try to place on this scandal. Underneath all of the spin, there is sordidness, viciousness, bitterness, deceit and every other manifestation of an exercise in raw power for wrong ends.

Anyone who would attempt to impede the exposure of that scandal does not deserve the benefit of spin or a clever MSM/DNC whitewash catchphrase such as "failure to authenticate."