One of the most famous quotes allegedly showing President Bush’s real frame of mind has proven to be false, a lie from (we are told) a source that proved not to be credible. Because the source doesn’t exist.

Capitol Hill Blue’s Apology for the mistake doesn’t actually mention the quote itself. But with a hat tip to Classical Values, we now see that Capitol Hill Blue (CHB) has quite a bit to explain.

CHB simply removed the story, which used to be Article 7779 according to Google’s cache of the site. Now, as of this writing, the page has no article on it, and just the current date with the site’s motto. It will be interesting to see, if in the weeks ahead, the numerous web pages citing the bogus quote will issue their own retraction. CHB is busy excising the quote, which they used repeatedly in many of their stories, and appending a disclaimer that the article had been edited since publication. But they don’t mention in those various edits that it is the very famous “piece of paper” quote that was excised.

Now there are qeustions about whether the CHB editor, William D. McTavish, really exists. But I’ll leave that to the good folks like those at Classical Values.

I hereby certify that I do exist, and will clearly and prominently post any corrections within the context of the original post. Bloggers would be well advised to do so, as the Internet is a place with a very long memory, what with competing bloggers, Google’s cache, and the Internet Wayback Machine at Archive.org.

The interesting thing about this story is that, for all their focus on mistakes being “lies”, GHB doesn’t simply come out and say they lied. They say they were ill informed, that the source seemed credible, and they ran with the story. Oh, make that STORIES. Not once, but over years of publishing, they quoted a man who never taught at the university he claimed to be at, never served in the administrations he claimed to serve in and never, evidently, showed up in any of the directories readily available. They trusted a source they never met with, never talked “voice” with, but merely exchanged emails with, and on issues as important as a purported quote of GWB saying the Constitution is just a “***-damned piece of paper”.

The hysterical left is repeatedly citing the lack of the predicted WMD in Iraq as a “lie” the President told. A lie is an intentional mistruth, something you say even though you know its not true. A mistake is something you’ve said that you believed was true.

CHB and GWB have the same problem, in that they trusted sources who turned out to be wrong. But in the case of the President, his sources weren’t simply lying to him, and he knew they were real people. They truly believed there were WMD, as evidenced by the universal nature of the assessment by our intelligence agencies, past Administrations, statements by Democrat leaders (including former President Bill Clinton), and foreign intelligence agencies.

In the case of CHB, they trusted not only a liar, but a cyber buddy who really doesn’t exist.