A quick and dirty explanation, with links, here.

But it was very quickly shown that the only hard evidence for the story was a document that was pretty conclusively shown to be a forgery.

The credulousness with which this document was accepted and incorporated into the report strongly suggested there was bias.  

Given that set of circumstances, why is it unreasonable that the network would want to make sure the parties injured by the biased, forgery-based report were going to accept the findings of the internal investigation?  Otherwise, the Republicans could have taken an adverse finding and claimed it was part of the same bias, thereby undermining its credibility.

Conversely, if the investigation had validated the document as authentic, the Republicans would have had no basis to challenge it.

Doing what CBS did was the ONLY way the document would have been accepted as authentic.  But the fact is, the document was a forgery.  That's hardly a 'distraction.'  

It's easy to blame the republicans for this, but it's the Media that is to blame 100% (if the documents were indeed forged).

The media is one of the pillars of our form of government - they have abdicated their duties in pursuit of who knows what. Facts are supposed to drive a story and nothing else.

Look at it this way: Most members of the media picked Obama over Clinton and the Obama over McCain. People on this site went ballistic when it was against their own. But they want to protect the same shoddy, issue based bias that permeates the same corrupt institution when it benefits them? Shame.

Hold the medias feet to the fire from now on. That's one of the best features of the blogosphere.

(based in part on documents that may have been fabricated)

Emphasis added.

As I recall, she was sharp, cogent & directly to the point--which was considered unusual because of her age, about 80-something-years at the time of the interview.

If you want to argue that the memo was not the issue then at least you have a point of view.  However IMHO the memo was the key to the story.  Without it as many people have said the story wouldn't have made it to air.   I feel pity for Dan Rather that his whole career was flushed down the toilet for a story that he probaly didn't work on until the last minute but he had plenty of chances to correct himself.  He choose to go down with the ship so it's a bed he must lie in.  

As for the premise of the story I find it humorous that this country just elected a president who never had the journalistic community go after him in a manor that would have produced this type of story.  With all the possible dirty laundry the press could have dug up and manufactured about Ayers and Wright and Obama's drug past etc... etc.. If Obama had been a republican would it have been acceptable for the media to make up stories, manufacture documents to get the real story out that we didn't know what Obama was doing with his time 30 years ago?  

For all my right wing brethren that screamed the media wasn't tough enough on Obama I say is this what we wanted?  This type of manufactured media firestorm over what a president was doing when they where 20 something years old?   Ridiculous.  The media (CBS) was wrong to air this story and they where right to leave this sort of trype alone when covering Obama.