As Captain Ed puts it, the “media and the Leftists have had a field day with the Downing Street memos that they claim imply that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence on WMD in order to justify the attack on Iraq.” Yet now, the authenticity of the memos is in question. British reporter Michael Smith, who first obtained the memos, “told AP 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.”
Destroyed the originals? Hmmm. . . . Powerline reports the Smith “either destroyed or returned the copies he had originally obtained.” Still, that conservative blog doubts “that the documents are fakes,” yet holds that the documents are “innocuous.” Captain Ed agrees, “Even if these memos could be authenticated, they’re still meaningless.”
Despite hearings and investigations held both in the U.S. and the United Kingdom showing that the Bush Administration did not “cook” intelligence on Iraq’s WMDs in order to strengthen its case to liberate Iraq, many administration critics remain committed to their “narrative” that the president lied to justify war. (You can download the Senate Intellitence Committee’s report here.)
These critics have recently based their case on memos of questionable authenticity which contain only a few sentences that could be interpreted to justify their narrative. These very memos also note British officials’ concerns that Saddam might use WMD in the event of an allied attack. Thus they prove that, prior to the liberation of Iraq, top British officials believed Saddam possessed WMDs.
Hat tip: Roger Simon.
UPDATE: Check out Right Side of the Rainbow’s post on the topic. He agrees that “the memos contain no smoking gun.”