Libs latching on to yet another fake document

First, libs wet themselves last year when that bastion of media impartiality, Dan Rather, broke the story about Bush's National Guard Service (or, in their minds, lack thereof). Come to find out, the documents were forged.

Then, Newsweak ran with this story about Koran-flushing by our guards in Gitmo. Come to find out, it was a single source who based his account on hearsay. Said source was also purportedly a "senior government official", curious in light of Newsweak's spirited defense of their hard-nosed investigative techniques: "Do you want someone who reports and investigates, or who simply takes the government's word for it?" Apparently they did the latter and tried to pass it off as the former.

Now, we have that "damning" Downing Street Memo. I haven't discussed it much, mainly because in light of the two aforementioned MSM flubs, as well as peddled theories that Kerry really won OH and FL in '04, I take liberal conspiracy theories with a grain of salt. Well, it appears I was wise to ignore this one, too.

For those who don't know, here's the gist of the Downing Street Memo:

Stamped "secret and strictly personal -- UK eyes only" and dated July 23, 2002, eight months before the Americans and Brits invaded Iraq, the main Downing Street memo summarizes a report from Sir Richard Dearlove, the chief of British intelligence. He'd just come back from Washington, where he'd met with top Bush administration officials.

Here's one juicy chunk:

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

So, it looks like Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq, and was going to "find" evidence to justify it. Wow. Seems damning, right?

There's just one small problem: it's not original. Thus, its authenticity is in question. From NewsMax:

The so-called Downing Street Memo - which was presumed to be authentic when Bush administration critics began touting it last month as evidence the president committed impeachable crimes - is actually a manually recreated copy - with the source of the memo now admitting he retyped the document before destroying the originals.

British reporter Michael Smith, who broke the memo story in the London Times on May 1, revealed to The Associated Press over the weekend that "he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals."

Smith's admission means there's now no independent way to determine the accuracy of the Downing Street Memo, i.e., whether he made any typos or transcription errors that could have changed the memo's meaning.

But wait! British intellignece? Wasn't that part of our basis for believing Saddam had WMD's? British and Russian intelligence (along with UN reports)? So we relied, in part, on faulty British intelligence, but now the same British intelligence is suddenly reliable because it's got some anti-Bush juicy morsels in it? But I digress...

Of course, expect the left to argue the same thing they did in the CBS fake document case: "Well, the documents are fake, but the story is real and you haven't proven otherwise!" Yeah, like it's incumbent upon us to prove a negative! OK, I saw on the Star that Michael Jackson is really an alien...I saw the photos! OK, the photos were doctored, but you still haven't shown me that MJ really isn't an alien!

See, Kerry brandished the Memo like Ted Kennedy brandishing a deli napkin with a waitress' phone number. He was ready to go after Bush and try to bring him down (since he failed to do so at the ballot box) with this "damning" Memo. "I think it's a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth and a profoundly important document that raises stunning issues here at home," he told a reporter.

He has since backed off. Even a loser like Kerry knows the fallout from fake documents. It played a part in his '04 loss.