Say Anything

Can I get a whore?

KURTZ: President Bush and Senator Kerry facing off on the trail during the final days of this campaign about the story dominating headlines this past week. "The New York Times," in cooperation with "60 Minutes," reported Monday that U.S. troops had failed to secure 380 tons of high grade ammunition at an Iraqi facility called al Qa Qaa...

DAVID FRUM, NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: I think it is a phony story. Look, there may be some truth in it. It may ultimately prove to be a good story. But I think "The New York Times" and CBS were very driven by their desire to get this out before the election. And so they did not...

KURTZ: Do you seriously believe -- I mean, this came to them from a letter written by the Iraqi interim government a few days before the story. Do you seriously think they said, a-ha, we can use this and we can get Bush with this story?

FRUM: No, I think what happens is one step more removed. It is very much like what happened with the forged National Guard story. I think that there are certain circumstances where the natural skepticism of some people in the media, their natural, their normal desire to complete the job gets eroded by their passions.

So in the forged documents story, here was something that was a pretty obvious fake, and yet Dan Rather was fooled. He was fooled because he wanted to be fooled.

KURTZ: This story is not fake.

FRUM: This is not fake. ...