I guess this is a big enough occasion, so I thought I'd steal a headline from Drudge....

Literally:

The linked article is a New York Times piece -- "CBS News Concludes It Was Misled on National Guard Memos, Network Officials Say" -- which I'm sure almost everyone has read by now.

After days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a "60 Minutes'' report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air.

The blue truth?

The red truth?

Is there such a thing as the real truth or do only cynical people care about such things? In logic either the documents were forgeries or they were not. When I produced an identical one on Microsoft Word, I was convinced. But had someone -- anyone -- produced one with an old typewriter, I would have admitted that it could have been done. But no one did.

Anyway, now that the forgery concession's out of the way, CBS plans to air an interview with the alleged source, Bill Burkett. That should prove interesting, as this is a guy who compares Bush to Hitler, and whose friends have equally interesting ideas.

Dan wouldn't try to colorize the truth by asking soft questions, would he?

UPDATE: While the CBS statement speaks of being misled by the documents themselves, Dan Rather admits only to being misled by the how the source obtained them:

....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. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

If that isn't weasel language, what is? All he saying is that he wouldn't have done it had he known this was going to happen.

Why, he's not even sorry for having been caught -- because he won't admit he's been caught!