From the mouth of a drug addict...

Silent Lucidity has an excellent post on the latest forgery meme put out by R.L. to dismiss the Downing Street memo.

[Excerpt] If the DSM "doesn't say anything" or if it's "old news" then why would anyone go to all the trouble to forge them, knowing the kind of trouble that could bring to the Times, and knowing the serious personal consequences that would be the result of English Libel Law? Hmmm?

Multiple news organizations have authenticated the documents. Smith has stated publicly that he destroyed copies of the documents and returned the originals to protect the source. The originals were not destroyed as erroneously reported in a single AP report. There is good reason to destroy the copies, however, because copy machines can be traced by the pattern of ink dots sprayed on the paper during the copy process.

The Associated Press released excerpts from the memos, including the July 23 memo, on June 18. "The following are excerpts from material in secret Downing Street memos written in 2002. The information, authenticated by a senior British government official, was transcribed from the original documents," the AP wrote.

Officials in both the American and, perhaps more importantly, the British governments have said the "memos" are authentic. If that were not the case, then you can be pretty damned sure that Blair would bring Mr. Smith and the Times to court under British libel laws, which differ quite a bit from U.S. laws.

Blair sits quietly, and so do the British Ministers who are also implicated. They would be, at the very least, publicly threatening lawsuits if they thought these documents were fake.

"In fact, no one involved has disputed the authenticity of the Downing Street memo -- not Blair; not Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence who wrote it; not the CIA; not the FBI; not the Defense Department; not the White House. And they've all had seven weeks in which to do so." - CJR

Got it, Rush?

Good.

Now, why are they still paying you to be on television and radio?

In addition to these good reasons for believing that the memos are authentic, we have Blair's statement that the memos don't contain anything new. This would be an odd statement to make about forgeries. If someone created a fake memo of a meeting attended by numerous cabinet members, the thing to do would be to simply say that the memo was fake. End of story. What's interesting is that Blair's statement is surprisingly candid. For most of us, the memos indeed don't contain anything "new." We have known for a long time now that the Bush administration cooked intelligence.

P.S. Check out the cheat sheet on the DSM at Rolling Stone (courtesy of Cut to the Chase).