If This is True...

it's not only devastating for Kerry and his liberal media Spirit Squad. This could end Dan Rather's career-- this is no minor screw-up. If these documents are forged, it demonstrates that Dan Rather is decidedly credulous when it comes to allegations against Republicans made by shady Democratic operatives.

This is worse than Peter Arnett's bullshit poison-gas story, and much, much worse than Dateline's faked rear-collision explosions.

And this would be the blogosphere's biggest scalp yet. In fact, one could make the argument that this is the first real scalp. This would be the first time the blogosphere has completely scooped the mainstream liberal Spirit Squad media-- and not only scooped it, destroyed it.

David writes:

Consider: if such documents had surfaced even as recently as the 2000 campaign, their analysis and refutation would have most likely taken days, possibly longer, depending on when copies of the documents were made available. Talk radio would have been the main mechanism for spreading the information. If the documents had surfaced in 1996, the refutation would have taken weeks or possibly not happened at all. In 1996, it might have been sufficient for the Boston Globe to claim that “an expert” had evaluated the documents and concluded that they were genuine. The source documents might never have seen the light of day.

Contrast that to what has happened today. The pdf files for the alleged Nation Guard memos were linked and circulated via the internet. They were viewed within hours by literally thousands of individuals with direct experience relevant to assessing their validity. This included experts in typesetting, forgeries, the National Guard, or any number of other aspects germane to the controversy. (I’m not one of those experts, but some of the points they raise, like the suprascript “th”, seem pretty convincing). Depending on what the major media do tonight, it is possible that the story will be laid to rest in less than 24 hours. Incredible.

There are two stories-- the story and the story of the story. Both are huge.