Sunday, June 19, 2005

Downing Street Fakes?

Follow the link above. Captain Ed has a great news analysis piece about this.

For a while now, the liberals have been hawking up these "Downing Street Memos" which supposedly show that Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq. Why? Because of one line in the memos which states something to the effect of "Facts are being fixed around the policy." Something like that.

Not that such is conclusive, or proof of anything. It's one staffer's interpretation of statements from a high-ranking British intelligence officer. And even then, a Congressional investigation found that there is no evidence that there was any intel-fixing or anything of the sort.

But that hasn't stopped the liberals from using the Downing Street Memos as proof of Bush's "crimes."

As it turns out, though, the documents might be fraudulent. Or, at least, we may have no way of knowing if they are or not (Gee, does this feel like Rathergate all over again?).

The British journalist who originally broke this story only had copies of the documents, destroyed the originals, and passed them by an anonymous "British official" who said that the content "seemed authentic." The problem is, you can't authenticate a copy, no matter what you think of the content. Bad move on the journalist's part. As Captain Ed succinctly puts it:
This, in fact, could very well be another case of "fake but accurate", where documents get created after the fact to support preconceived notions about what happened in the past. One fact certainly stands out -- Michael Smith cannot authenticate the copies. And absent that authentication, they lose their value as evidence of anything . . .

Even if these memos could be authenticated, they're still meaningless. They could only excite the kind of idiots that would hold mock impeachment hearings with four witnesses and no authority whatsoever.

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