First Fox News assured its brainless accolytes that there was nothing to the contents of the Downing Street minutes and memos, now Rush Limbaugh has come out with a similar message for the intellect-free class he calls his Dittoheads:

I purposely haven’t talked about this Downing Street memo much because, frankly, A, it didn’t interest me. And, you know, if it doesn’t interest me I’m not going to talk about it. And the reason it didn’t interest me is because it was just another one of these ginned up things by the libs, and it looks like it’s got some similarities to Bill Burkett and the forged documents of CBS and Rathergate.

In fact, the Associated Press has a story that the reporter who discovered the memos destroyed the originals and retyped them himself. There was some dispute over whether or not the original memos were destroyed. The original memos don’t say anything. They don’t prove anything, other than the Brits were concerned about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq themselves. Also, what’s this reporter’s name? British reporter Michael Smith, who broke the memo story in the London Times on May the 1st, revealed to the AP over the weekend that he protected the identity of the source that he’d obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals. His 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.

Methinks he doth demur too much.

The problem with the tactic of alleging that the documents are fake is that no one in authority in either the British or American governments has denied their authenticity.

Prediction: Another set of documents will be released soon, perhaps by a U.S. source, that appears to prove the Bushes’ malfeasance in setting up the war. As the brouhaha is building, these new documents will proved to be forgeries, thus casting aspersions on the genuine minutes and memos.

Connect: