A Tale of Two Forgeries

Take the two following situations:

1) The Bush administration used forged documents to support it's position that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

2) CBS News used forged documents in a piece investigating George W. Bush's draft dodging heroics during the Vietnam war.

I'll ignore the question of whether or not the documents used by CBS actually were forged, because it doesn't matter if they were or not--simply making the allegation that they are forgeries has effectively diverted the debate away from the issue of Bush's National Guard service.

Why is the public so ready to accept Item #2 and not Item #1? What is wrong with people? How can it not be obvious what is being done here?