CBS News has drawn its sword for Bush's blood. Too bad their lead is false.

I'm fed up. Henceforth, the topic of desperate, apoplectic attacks on the president will be referred to as the "Idiocy Bulletin." And that will be only to document the inevitable crumbling of this perfidious, horrifyingly irresponsible invention of crime and history.

I'll adapt a comment I made on Pejmanesque:

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I'm still floored as to why the left contorts itself to believe that the Bush administration spent enormous amounts of energy towards falsifying evidence before military action but didn't give a single thought as to falsifying evidence when in Iraq.

There's an answer to this: they believe Bush is stupid when he needs to be stupid, and fiendishly clever when their conspiracy rubbish calls for guile. Nothing to do with logic, principle or reality. This is ridiculous. It's about time to pull the plug and throw people out of civil discourse on account of being partisan hacks.

Hear me out: this conflagration has nothing to do with Bush. It speaks volumes, instead, about his self-anointed enemies.

UPDATE: Just as I posted, a thought occurred to me: [if this nonsensical straw-grasping continues], the Democratic party is headed for their second split in about 150 years [i.e., nominally rational, left-of-center men like Joe Lieberman on one ticket and the growing number of liberals who have narrowed down their vocabulary these days to "Florida," "Bush," "oil" and "lies" on the other]. I'd give it less than three general election cycles. [Time to theorize]. More on this later.

UPDATE II (IDIOCY BULLETIN): Condoleezza Rice, a woman of powerful integrity in her own right but moreso an implicitly trustworthy administration figure for the otherwised prejudiced mainstream media, delivers a killing blow to this out-of-control, CIA-backroom fantasy. Here's the king:

If CIA Director George Tenet had had any doubts about the truthfulness of that sentence, "he did not make them known" to the White House, Rice told reporters aboard Air Force One during Bush's current African trip.

[...]

"If the CIA — the director of central intelligence — had said 'Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone," Rice said. "We have a high standard for the president's speeches."

That's a direct refutation, on personal authority, of the CBS-CHB-etcetera story which directly states that CIA director George Tenet was not a part of the appraisal of the Nigern link. Not that he missed a meeting or lost the Niger memo. He wasn't in on it:

The top CIA official, Director George Tenet, was not involved in those discussions and apparently never warned the President he was on thin ice.

Incredible. The only way this can become even more dreamlike is if CBS claims that the unnamed sources do, in fact exist, albeit in wraithlike, anonymous form. If the right were anywhere near as voracious as the left, we'd be privy to watching the White House and allies hang these journalist agitators out to dry. As with Rice's eloquent shattering of the accusations, I expect to see a similarly graceful coup de grace from the president not long after his return from Africa.

UPDATE III: I moved a portion of comments I made in response to the Pejman topic to another entry. See below.

UPDATE IV (IDIOCY BULLETIN): CNN anchor Aaron Brown didn't flinch in the slightest from jumping on the CHB wagon (From Instapundit). CBS, for their part, has not exactly been forgoing quantity of negative reporting for quality. E. Volokh noticed a retraction of a perjorative heading in the half-explosive non-story. This is messy stuff, and messy stuff smacks of a desire for control of the matter, not the truth thereof. And since when can the media hide behind reasonable doubt when it prohibits the president to enjoy such luxuries?

UPDATE V (IDIOCY BULLETIN): Eugene Volokh just caught the second adjustment on CBS by its story. From IP, of course.

UPDATE VI (IDIOCY BULLETIN): No, the uranium case is not serious. It is a straw man, it's the best the left can do, and it will only further damage their credibility with Iraq's liberation. Alex Knapp takes it away. From IP.

UPDATE VII: Bill, can you sing "You Give Blogging a Bad Name" like Bon Jovi, all to hot-lixx guitar? Then I'd appreciate the "comment."

UPDATE VIII: Niger and Nigeria are two different countries, typos notwithstanding.