CBS Fraud Saves Josh Marshall Embarrassment...

According to the latest story by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball from Newsweek, CBS bumped a story about the forged Niger documents passed through Italian intelligence prior to the start of the war in Iraq in order to air the now discredited report on President Bush's National Guard service.

As we read into the article, we find out that one Josh Marshall was collaborating on that story:

“This is like living in a Kafka novel,” said Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer and a Web blogger who had been collaborating with “60 Minutes” producers on the uranium story. “Here we had a very important, well-reported story about forged documents that helped lead the country to war. And then it gets bumped by another story that relied on forged documents.”

So the story was meant to embarrass the Bush administration for being taken in by forged documents in the run-up to the war. We're shocked (shocked!) that Josh would be involved in running a hit piece on the president...(did we say, shocked yet?)

Now let's put aside the hilarious irony of bumping a piece about people being taken in by forged documents in order to air a story by people taken in by forged documents, let's focus on the Niger forgery instead...

Let's continue with the reporting from Newsweek on how things are developing with this story:

The delay of the CBS report comes at a time when there have been significant new developments in the case—although virtually none of them have been reported in the United States. According to Italian and British press reports, Martino—the Rome middleman at the center of the case—was questioned last week by an Italian investigating magistrate for two hours about the circumstances surrounding his acquisition of the documents.

Questioned for two hours, you say? What did he say when questioned?

We read all the way through the rest of the article to see if we could find the answer...

Hmmm...

Nothing here....

Still nothing...

All the way to the end, and we've got zilch...

So how do we find out the precious details, do tell?

Let's go back to the article we linked to on Sunday from Saturday's UK Telegraph...

We'll just quote our original post:

French Fraud Exposed...

...French agent admits it to Italian authorities...

The lede:

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.

If this doesn't make you understand that:

a) France was never, ever, ever going to back our efforts in Iraq,
b) France never will no matter what lies to the contrary John Kerry tells,
c) France is not our friend, and that
d) France must pay for this act of betrayal,

then you are either a complete fool or French or both.

The only question is: how best do we "express our disapproval"? I'll have to chew on my thoughts for the best U.S. response, what do you think?

Sacre bleu! In the pay of France! Whooooooooopppppssss!

That mean ole Bush administration - you know that evil man who alienated our friend, our ally, our bosom buddy France - lied to us based on documents forged by...

...France!

Messrs. Isikoff and Hosenball who have presumably "extensively researched" this Niger story for their reporting do their best to bury the truth. Their article reads like an indictment of the administration, but they had to know the truth about the interrogation to have reported it. But they deliberately mislead their readers about its conclusions.

Josh Marshall "collaborated" on a hit piece on the Bush administration. Had that story aired on Wednesday, their entire story would have fallen apart by Friday when it was revealed that FRANCE forged the documents...Since it would have been front page news on Thursday, Old Media wouldn't have been able to ignore the confession on Friday...Even if the NYT avoided the story like the plague (which, of course, they would have), the NY Post headlines on Saturday would have been "French Forgeries!"...

But luckily for Josh and the DNC that story never aired, so Old Media was able to bury the story and the American public never heard about it.

What would Josh have done to spin himself out of that story? How would he have explained that the bumblers they portrayed in the administration were letting Italian authorities who were already all over the case like white on rice take the lead?

Those incompetent, unilateralist cowboys!

What would have become of his claims of the Bush administration's "unilateralism"?

What about all those claims about how the Bush administration alienated our ally, the French?

What would his friends have said when he participated in using France's forged documents to expose the lies of all those DNC "talking points"?

Would Josh Marshall have ever been invited to another DNC Happy Hour?

Let's see..."60 Minutes" replaced a story on which they collaborated with a Democratic partisan whose website is actually named "Talking Points Memo" (notice how Isikoff and Hosenball fail to mention that) to put together a smear that attempts to undermine a Republican administration based on forged documents from France with a story on which they collaborated with several Democratic partisans to put together a smear that attempts to undermine a Republican administration based on forged documents from Texas.

He should thank God that this information isn't available on the internet where people could find out how clueless his "collaboration" turned out to be...He'd have really been embarrassed if it was...