Dan Rather's feeble apology.

Here's my read of Dan Rather's "statement on the documents," which I'm going to put in writing before reading what anyone else has to say:

Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a "60 Minutes Wednesday" story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question-and their source-vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically.

You could believe they were still authentic and say that! After praising yourself for "extensive additional interviews"--as if you had originally had a decent set of interviews--you're only withdrawing your official "journalistic" seal of approval. Has your research shown that the documents are, to a journalistic standard of proof, fake? If so, say that you now believe them to be fake. If not, say why you've only suffered a loss of "confidence," leading you only to discontinue "vouching." You want to be able to deny that it was wrong to "vouch" in the past. But it was wrong!

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

Oh, what a passive innocent you are. Misled! (Is that anything like John Kerry's repeated "Bush misled us into war," which is meant to keep us from thinking about the fact that he seems to have voted for it?) The bad ones are the misleaders. But why would we ever trust a journalist who isn't on guard against being misled? There will always be sources that mislead, so it must be your responsibility to guard against deceit.

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.

"Leads me to a point"--again, how passive you are. Always being led places. And, again, look at this effort to preserve the claim of having acted properly in the past. You've now reached "a point," but at an earlier point, the evidence was different, and you behaved properly at that time, you'd like to say. If only you "knew then what [you] know now," as if it weren't your responsibility to know things before you ran with the story.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry.

So here is the shred of an apology. You're only sorry for making "a mistake in judgment." But the only mistake in judgment you've alluded so far is trusting your source, who was the real bad actor here. Who is that source, by the way, and why are you protecting it?

It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

I haven't the slightest idea why I should believe this. One would have to think CBS has a lamblike faith in to goodness of news sources. How could that possibly be the "CBS News tradition"?

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

"Please know"? Please. You want us to just believe you, and you think perhaps we will because good people do believe what they are told, they way you, you good, good people, believed that source that turned out to be so bad.

I wonder how much effort went into the careful crafting of this laughable apology.