Dan Rather, Sept. 20, 2004: “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. But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry.”

Dan Rather, last night: “The facts of the story were correct. One supporting pillar of the story, albeit an important one, one supporting pillar was brought into question. To this day, no one has proven whether it was what it purported to be or not….The story is accurate.”

Conclusion: Dan Rather apologized last September in a panicked effort to keep his job, even though he didn’t actually believe the apology was necessary. It’s bad enough that he based a story intended to bring down a presidency on obvious forgeries. It’s bad enough that he didn’t have the backbone to stand by his story if he really believed it to be true. But there are few words for how contemptible he truly is for continuing to retail the lie now — a lie he was too chicken to defend back then at a time when a minimal amount of manly honor required him to stick to his demented guns.