In fact, Rather suggested that the media asked tough questions, but their crime was to publicize the Bush administration's official -- and dishonest, in his view -- answers, and then move on to other news. Apparently, it was the media's job to spend the rest of the newscast pointing out just how malignantly wrong the White House was, to underline that the government (at least in Republican hands) is a throne of lies.

If that is true, then wasn't Rather condemning himself?

Rather lamented that when "reputable people" have questioned the Bush line, "the press has treated them like voices in the wilderness. These views, though they might be given air time, become lone dots -- dots that journalists don't dare connect, even if the connections are obvious, even if people on the Internet and in the independent press are making these very same connections. The mainstream press doesn't connect these dots because someone might then accuse them of editorializing, or of being the, quote, 'liberal media.'"

What? Critics of the Bush line weren't "voices in the wilderness." They were regular and honored guests. Take ABC. That network not only aired sappy soundbites with Saddam, but sympathetic interviews with Saddam spokesman Tariq Aziz, with Saddam-funded "human shields" from America, and with "diverse" protesters in the streets with Ramsey Clark, Saddam's defense lawyer. U.N. experts like Hans Blix, a man vocally against any military intervention, were treated like gurus.

The major media disrespected the anti-war, anti-Bush side? This is clearly the loopiest passage in the whole speech -- if you don't count the entire vibe of document-faking Dan Rather posing as a guardian of journalism.

Dan Rather, do us all a favor. For once and for all, retire.