What a Complete and Utter Crock of a Retraction.

Kerry obviously needs to directly hire C^BS's newswriters. They obviously know "nuance" and spin. Let me fisk their own report on Ra^therGate:

CBS: Bush Memo Story A 'Mistake'

(CBS/AP) CBS News said Monday it cannot prove the authenticity of documents used in a 60 Minutes story about President Bush's National Guard service and that airing the story was a "mistake" that CBS regretted.

CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, the reporter of the original story, apologized.

CBS News claimed a source had misled the network on the documents' origins. The network pledged "an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken."

In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."

Rather spoke with Burkett about the deception:

Dan Rather: "Why did you mislead us?"
Bill Burkett: "Well, I didn't totally mislead you. I misled you on the one individual. You know your staff pressured me to a point to reveal that source.
Rather: "Well, we were trying to get the chain of possession."
Burkett: "I understand that."
More of Rather questioning Burkett.

The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush's National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.

"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.

"Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting," Heyward continued. "We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush had seen the CBS statement.

"There are a number of serious questions that remain unanswered and they need to be answered. Bill Burkett, who CBS now says is their source, in fact, is not an unimpeachable source, as was previously claimed," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Monday.

"Bill Burkett is a source who has been discredited in the past. So this raises a lot of questions. There were media reports about Mr. Burkett speaking with senior -- or having senior-level contacts with the Kerry campaign. That raises questions," McClellan said.

In a separate statement, Rather said that "after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically.

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

"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," Rather added. "I feel like hell,'' he told WCBS reporter Marcia Kramer.

The authenticity of the documents — four memoranda attributed to Guard commander Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — has been under fire since they were described in the Sept. 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes.

CBS had not previously revealed who provided the documents or how they were obtained.

Burkett has previously alleged that in 1997 he witnessed allies of then-Gov. Bush discussing the destruction of Guard files that might embarrass Mr. Bush, who was considering a run for the presidency. Bush aides have denied the charge.

In the statement, CBS said: "Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point."

Questions about the president's National Guard service have lingered for years. Some critics question how Mr. Bush got into the Guard when there were waiting lists of young men hoping to join it to escape the draft and possible service in Vietnam.

Some people have answered that charge in that Bush volunteered for a six-year stint in order to be a pilot. The waiting list for that was not as long. Again, nobody holds Clinton accountable for outright lying to avoid the draft, so what's the big freaking deal?

In the Sept. 8 60 Minutes report, former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes — a Democrat — claimed that, at the behest of a friend of the Bush family, he pulled strings to get young George W. Bush into the Guard.

Yet Mr. Barnes - a major fundraiser for Kerry and personal acquaintance of Dan Rather - who, by the way, Dan attended a DNC fundraiser for - has sworn under oath that he did no such thing. Lying through omission, Exhibits, "A" and "B."

Other questions concern why Mr. Bush missed a physical in 1972, and why there are scant records of any service by Mr. Bush during the latter part of 1972, a period during which he transferred to an Alabama guard unit so he could work on a campaign there.

Yet absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Lying through innuendo, Exhibit "A."

The CBS documents suggested that Mr. Bush had disobeyed a direct order to attend the physical, and that there were other lapses in his performance. One memo also indicated that powerful allies of the Bush family were pressuring the guard to "sugar coat" any investigation of Lt. Bush's service.

No, the documents made it explicit that President Bush disobeyed a direct order while a pilot in the TANG. There was no "suggestion" about it. That's what had Hurricane Dan salivating.

Skeptics immediately seized on the typing in the memos, which included a superscripted "th" not found on all 1970s-era typewriters. As the controversy raged, CBS broadcast interviews with experts who said that some typewriters from that period could have produced the markings in question.

What unmitigated horseshit. "Not found on all 1970s-era typewriters" my ass. Not found on any 1970s-era typewriters. What typewriters that did have a reduced-case "th" were not capable of superscripting them, and the only machines available at the time that could superscript weren't typewriters at all. The only "expert" they brought in was a 1970s-era typewriter repairman. By checking the Blogosphere, they could have gotten six real experts that could prove otherwise. Lying by omission, Exhibit "C."

Other critics saw factual errors in the documents, stylistic differences with other writing by Killian and incorrect military lingo.

Yeah, that P.O. Box 34567 was a dead giveaway, too. As was the B.S. Zip Code. But does C^BS mention those? No. Lying by omission, Exhibit "D."

Some relatives of Col. Killian disputed that the memos were real. His former secretary said the sentiments regarding Mr. Bush's failures as an officer were genuine, but the documents were not.

Did C^BS interview "some relatives of Col. Killian" for the original 60 Minutes piece?

No, it would have detracted from the strength of the attack.

Did they interview his former Secretary for the original piece? After all, she's the one who would have typed them, and would have told them unequivocally that they were fake.

No. That would have detracted from the strength of the attack. Lying through omission, Exhibits "E" and "F."

Some document experts whom CBS consulted for the story told newspapers they had raised doubts before the broadcast and were ignored. CBS disputed their accounts, pointing to the main document expert the network consulted, Marcel Matley.

Except Mr. Matley is a handwriting expert not a document expert, and apparently not much of an expert at any rate, as Beldar discovered. More pajama blogging.

Matley insisted he had vouched for the authenticity of the signatures on the memos, but had not determined whether the documents themselves were genuine.

And, as Jim Geraghty found, Mr. Matley violated his own rules by authenticating a signature on a photocopied document.

Some expert. Of course they "disputed their accounts." Their accounts made C^BS look like exactly what they were - partisan attack dogs for the DNC willing to ignore anything that disagreed with the Official Party Line. Lying by obfuscation, Exhibit "A."

Last week, CBS News stood by its reporting while vowing to continue working the story. The network acknowledged there were questions about the documents and pledged to try to answer them.

Mr. Bush maintains that he did not get special treatment in getting into the Guard, and that he fulfilled all duties. He was honorably discharged.

On Saturday, a White House official said Mr. Bush has reviewed the disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972, and did not recall having seen them previously.

Which he wouldn't have since A) they were forgeries, and B) they were supposed to be personal memos in Col. Killians' private records. CBS was playing "GOTCHA!" and got burned, but they're still trying to spin the story frantically - ANSWER THE QUESTIONS, Mr. PRESIDENT! WE DON'T CARE THAT THEY'RE BOGUS, ANSWER THEM!

In his first public comment on the documents controversy, the president told The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., "There are a lot of questions about the documents, and they need to be answered."

The Bush campaign has alleged that their Democratic rivals were somehow involved in the story. John Kerry's campaign denies it. In an email revealed last week, Burkett said he had contacted the Kerry campaign but received no response.

Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to find and make public by next week any unreleased files about Mr. Bush's Vietnam-era Air National Guard service to resolve a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Associated Press.

Which raises the question, "Why won't Kerry sign a Form 180, and why hasn't the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to have his records released?" No partisanship there, no sir!

The White House and Defense Department have on several occasions claimed that they had released all the documents only to make additional records available later on.

It would have been nice if C^BS had shown the same interest in the delayed appearance of the Rose Law Firm billing records. And have those later-appearing records shown anything damaging? If they had, would the forged memos have been necessary?

You'll note that not one of C^BS's links tie to anything outside C^BS, such as Saturday's Washington Post's graphic comparison of the forged memos with known real ones. Lying through omission, Exhibit "G."

What they didn't say was far more revealing than what they did.