I think something has been lost in all of this debate.
According to the Washington Post CBS found a real live witness to what Killian actually thought back then, retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges. Hodges was Killian's superior and currently a Bush supporter. Here's what the WP says:
A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone and Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."
"These documents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people," the CBS News official said. "Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles."
The official said the network regarded Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, as he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Bush. Hodges, who declined to grant an on-camera interview to CBS, did not respond to messages left on his home answering machine in Texas.
Now I have no way of know if this is true or not but it seems to me that if Hodges did say that the documents matter a lot less.
After all, the documents, even if true, only showed what Killian thought at the time. Nothing more. And it seems that Hodges is saying that Killian did think those things way back then.
The argument has been that the only evidence backing the CBS accusations are documents now suspected to be forgeries. But that's not true. There is also one eyewitness who is alive today.
In turn this raises all kinds of interesting questions. If the documents are forgeries and Hodges testimony is confirmed, then whoever forged them knew they were based on true facts and had a good idea of what Killian said back then. Who could that be?
Or maybe they are not forgeries at all.