A known known.

I've largely avoided the Killian memo story for a couple reasons - I don't know and the truth is, I don't much care. Whatever advantage CBS thought the documents gave them in covering the story of Bush's "service," his inadequacies as a Guardsman have been well documented elsewhere with non-controvertible evidence. He was a lousy trooper, plain and simple.

And even he knows it, as Atrios points out...

CBS and Dan Rather have their problems which they're going to have to sort out, but as anonymous reminds us in comments, this is the key point:

Q Scott, on the National Guard documents on "60 Minutes," the First Lady says she believes these are forgeries. The RNC has accused the Democratic Party of being the source of these documents. Knowing then what you know now, would you still have released those documents when you did?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, that's a hypothetical question, John. We received those documents from a major news organization. We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time.

If the basic thrust of the memos was false - if, say, Bush came forward and said "Hey, wait a minute! Those can't be real! I never disobeyed a direct order..." then why would our dear Scotty say such a thing?

Why, indeed?

He was a lousy trooper. And even he knows it.