Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online has some pithy remarks about the 60 Minutes scandal and the sudden implosion of Dan Rather's career. Here's a paragraph or so:
Dan Rather considers it outrageous and offensive that anyone would question the judgment that led to this situation. He defends what appear to be very shoddy methods (reading letters over the phone to sources, asking sources not to talk to the press, etc.), as if only a "partisan" or a fool would question them.
Well, if you agree with Rather, maybe you should give just a smidgen more slack to George W. Bush about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush's sources were more solid by several orders of magnitude than Rather's, and yet it is "obvious" to so many that Bush lied while Rather deserves the benefit of the doubt. George W. Bush had the head of the CIA, the intelligence agencies of all our allies, the Clinton administration, the United Nations, and most of the establishment media generally backing his understanding of the threat from Iraq. Dan Rather had a couple shoddy Xeroxes - not all of which were examined thoroughly or at all. He interviewed a partisan - Ben Barnes - a huge backer of Kerry whose story has changed several times. But because many who hate Bush believe he lied, they are willing to believe any lies that confirm what they already know to be true.
Good stuff. As a stunned Dan Rather gazes at his credibility and his career swirling down the drain one wonders who's next? Will we ever know who actually composed the frauds? Whoever it was could be looking at serious criminal charges, since forging military documents is a felony. No doubt there is somewhere a political hack who will be sleeping fitfully tonight. Defaming the president is not as much fun, nor as easy, as these folks apparently thought it would be.