The Cheese stands alone

This morning, CNN cornered Dan Rather on the street and asked him what he thought about the charges that the National Guard memos concerning President Bush may have been forged.
Rather's reply was to assert with full confidence (I heard the clip) that he trusted his sources and that he stands behind them. But the question is, who are those sources? Or, if he's not willing to admit the sources, who are the "experts" that authenticated the documents?

Meanwhile, CBS news is posting articles about the possibility of the forgery, featuring quotes on the sidebar by independent document examiners who are "virtually certain" the documents were "computer generated." Not a very likely thing to have happened in 1972 and 1973.

CBS isn't the only organization with dissension in the ranks. The Democratic Party apparently hasn't had time to get together and compare notes. Terry McAuliffe is out there saying that these documents were planted by Karl Rove or some such republican. He also maintains "nobody - Democratic National Committee or groups associate with us - were involved in any way with these documents." That's a pretty broad statement, seeing how many people are associated with the DNC these days...including, perhaps, CBS.
Joe Lockhart (as quoted by George Stephanopolus) denies the party had anything to do with it.
But Sen Tom Harkin is saying, "Mr. Bush has repeatedly insisted that he did his duty. We now know this isn't true...The president lied to the American people."

It's falling apart. Half of them understand that the evidence is mounting and pointing to forgery and so they are trying to run away from it to save the party. But Harkin (and probably Susan Estrich) will keep pointing toward the President and things that amount to "See, I told you so!"

ps: in the process of preparing this post, Powerline posted with some Dan Rather Analysis.

UPDATE: I added the Washington Times link above that contains the Terry McAuliffe quote.
Also, Dan Rather questioned a young reporter about her sources when she asked him a question and warned her to "stay away from rumor mills." Uh...what about YOUR sources Mr. Rather?
Well, about those sources he says they "took a risk to authenticate [the] story." What risk did they take if we don't know who they are???

Lastly, Dan Rather will be on CBS news tonight and Powerline found the Pat Caddell quote I had heard about on the radio earlier from a Fox News Interview, in which he expresses his concerns about the Democrats committing to this too quickly (see Harkin quote above.)