Even after all of these months, Mary Mapes apparently still won’t admit that the Bush Guard documents were forgeries.

She claims that a researcher has since shown her typography on other documents from the period Bush was in the Guard that suggest that the memos she obtained cannot be easily dismissed “as being forgeries.”

AI Cont’d compares her to Baghdad Bob.

Mary Mapes solidifies her reputation as the Baghdad Bob of American journalism. How else can you characterize her attempt to portray the 60 Minutes’ forged memo story as the parallel of both Plamegate and the McCarthy witchhunts.

Rathergate.com has more from the Vanity Fair article.

Mapes has recently reviewed documents culled by a private researcher who went to the Texas National Guard headquarters, as well as various archives and libraries across the U.S., and she reports that they include right-hand signature blocks, odd abbreviations, and other characteristics that were used to dismiss the Killian memos.

And responds with:

Mary, the docs were fake. It is not relevant if what was contained in the fake documents was true. There is nothing but fake documentation to back up those wild charges.

HoyStory adds:

Suffice it to say, that the only people that still believe those fakes are authentic are also waiting on the next circuit of the Hale-Bopp comet so they can visit the spaceship hiding behind it.

The Chief Brief is amazed.

Maybe I am just not high enough on the food chain to get invited to the meetings, but I am constantly amused by this Vast Right Wing Conspiracy theory of bloggers, that somehow we are all part of some Bush/Rove far right wing network dedicated to silencing enemies of the administration. What do they teach these people at journalism school that prevents them from understanding the simple fact that there are just plenty of people out there, who amazingly despite not having journalism degrees, know how to do things like web searches on Google, and use MS Word.

FRW Rants on about this Mapes’ quote: “If I was an idiot, it was for believing in a free press that is able to do its job without fear or favor.”

Do its job? What might that be, sugar? Perhaps ‘producing a story, using forged documents from a questionable top secret source, that has the potential to make the president look like a pansy-ass tool in a war situation when he’s in charge of, ya know, fighting a war currently’? I would think, since this alledged damnation of Bush was written in the 1960s, you could take a couple extra days to fact-check. The thing had been “around” for 40 years, afterall.

Apparently, her above free press statement doesn’t apply to bloggers.

UPDATE: Greg Wallace adds the following, referring to the Amazon.com description of Mary Mapes book, Truth and Duty:

“Digital McCarthyism” seems to be a little over the top considering the reality of the situation: that it was a handful of bloggers that brought down Mapes, Rather and cBS in its naked attempt to throw the 2004 general election. And when was cBS under fire from the federal government?