本來是要在一草博文“

跟貼答覆gmuoruo兄的，可是無論如何都發不成。只好貼在這裡了：

（先向一草博致歉和致謝，借用貴寶地多多！）

gmuoruo兄，交換至此，我想我們可以“Agree to disagree”。

Dan Rather 被CBS逼辭固然是“鐵板釘釘”的歷史事實，但卻一丁點兒不能說明究竟內幕如何。“替罪羊”或“捨車保帥”是歷史上永遠的戲目。

Killian documents雖然被證實是偽造的，這是否是個設局並沒有被任何人肯定或否定。儘管如此，文件所提出的小布希在National Guard受到一些特殊對待，例如未完成訓練要求等等，現在都證明是“鐵板釘釘”事實存在的，我就在這裡再引一次的：

Bush had completed five years, four months, and five days toward his six-year service obligation.

In September 2004, Lawrence Korb, an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan, after reviewing the payroll records for Bush's last two years of service, concluded that they indicated that Bush did not fulfill his obligations and could have been ordered to active duty as a result.

至於是不是Dan Rather 未經查證就報道，請看下面的段落：

CBS investigations prior to airing the segment[edit]

Mapes and her colleagues began interviewing people who might be able to corroborate the information in the documents, while also retaining four forensic document experts, Marcel J. Matley, James J. Pierce, Emily Will, and Linda James, to determine the validity of the memos.

On September 5, CBS interviewed Killian's friend Robert Strong, who ran the Texas Air National Guard administrative office. Among other issues covered in his interview with Rather and Mapes, Strong was asked if he thought the documents were genuine. Strong stated, "they are compatible with the way business was done at the time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry Killian being."^[37] Strong had first seen the documents twenty minutes earlier and also said he had no personal knowledge of their content;^[38] he later claimed he had been told to assume the content of the documents was accurate.^[39]

On September 6, CBS interviewed General Robert "Bobby" Hodges, a former officer at the Texas Air National Guard and Killian's immediate superior at the time. Hodges declined CBS' request for an on-camera interview, and Mapes read the documents to him over the telephone. According to Mapes, Hodges agreed with CBS's assessment that the documents were real, and CBS reported that Hodges stated that these were "the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."^[40] However, according to Hodges, when Mapes read portions of the memos to him he simply stated, "well if he wrote them, that's what he felt," and he claims he never confirmed the validity of the content of the documents. General Hodges later asserted to the investigatory panel that he told Mapes that Killian had never, to his knowledge, ordered anyone to take a physical and that he had never been pressured regarding Lieutenant Bush, as the documents alleged.^[41] Hodges also claims that when CBS interviewed him, he thought the memos were handwritten, not typed,^[42] and following the September 8 broadcast, when Hodges had seen the documents and heard of claims of forgery by Killian's wife and son, he was "convinced they were not authentic" and told Rather and Mapes on September 10.^[43]

Dan Rather在CBS前後共43年包括24年CBS Evening News 主播，多次獲 Emmy Awards， Peabody Awards, 和若干大學榮譽學位，如果他真是不稱職的，恐怕連2年4個月也做不下來！

對重要事件的報道是媒體人義不容辭的責任，不能因為報道可能對某一政黨或公職人員有負面影響就認為是故意跟他們過不去甚至惡意攻擊。例如Dan Rather對Abu Ghraib的非法非人道的酷刑的報道就不能說是跟小布希過不去吧？ 

再說一遍，我們就Agree to disagree吧。