Dan Rather's recent defense of his story charging Bush with less than perfect National Guard Service rings hollow.

He has said that whatever critics have charged about the likely authenticity of the story's support documents from Bush's service record, no challenge has been made to the story's main charge.

Defenders of Rather have also suggested that to discuss the issue of Rather's journalistic credibility is to take our focus off of Candidate Bush, which is the real matter of import.

Yet, how can Rather hold Bush accountable for excellence in his professional service when he has himself fallen below that standard? Hypocrisy ought to be one of public life's revised standard of secular seven deadline gaffs -- if not sins.

Rather ought to admit that the vetting of the Bush documents was under par and confess that the withholding of validating expert's identities is not a legitimate journalistic practice. The whole point of expert opinion, like expert testimony in a courtoom, is to present an established professional in the field's public assessment of a matter. That professional is to be held accountable; his or her reputation is at stake.

So, too, should Rather be held to an established standard of professional ethics as well as expertise. Rather than playing fast and loose with the angle from which the public views his and /Sixty Minutes'/ fact checkers and producers to provide reliable reportage, Rather should admit fault on the points where it exists and explain why, logically, these lapses don't impact the claims for which the apparently forged documents were used as evidence.

There's no question that my respect for Rather as a reporter--and my trust in the care of /Sixty Minutes/ as one of the few venues of televised investigative journalism--has been damaged. And this, not nearly as much by the incident itself as the way in which the incident has been handled after the fact.