For those worried about the authenticity of the Downing Street Minutes

[berni_mccoy]

I got tired of defending it, so I asked the editors of The Times themselves to defend it themselves.

Stan, this one's for you.

Dear Sirs,

Regarding the Downing Street Memo stories, we Americans have been so utterly let down by our own media and it's piss-poor ability to execute proper journalism (CBS, Newsweek, and the rest), that even the staunchest critics of the Bush administration are loathe to accept the authenticity of the story. As you can imagine, this is completely frustrating to the population of the U.S. that did not vote for George W. Bush.

Is there any further information you can offer to support the authenticity of the document? Have any government officials validated the authenticity? Are any sources willing to go public with what they say (keep in mind, most of us only have access to the online article, so if more details were offered in print, we would greatly appreciate knowing what they are)? Is there something we are missing about the authenticity of the documents? We know that the authenticity of the document has not been questioned by British government officials, but we 'Merikuns' have been there before.

Please forgive any disrespect this request may imply. It is not that we don't trust your organization, we no longer trust *any* media organization (can you blame us)?

Sincerely,
XXX

[seriousstan]

1. Thank you.

[chalky]

2. Please keep us posted on the reply. I'd really like to pass it on to the

naysayers that I'm running into as well.

[magellan]

3. Great letter, hope they answer

Thanks for doing this!

[FreedomAngel82]

4. Question from me

Why do people call it the "minutes" instead of "memo"? What's the difference? Thanks.

[magellan]

5. Either is right, but minutes is more accurate

The London Times specifically (and correctly) referred to the document as "minutes" in an accompanying May 1, 2005 article entitled "Blair planned Iraq war from start":

...As minutes of the proceedings, headed “Secret and strictly personal — UK eyes only”, state: “This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.”

However, the headline of the article containing the actual minutes is "The secret Downing Street memo". That's where the confusion comes from, I think.

[Karenina]

7. What's written in the memo

are the minutes of the meeting! Please do go here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3759670#3763673

[tmorelli415]

6. The British media is a bit more 'tabloid' in storyline treatment

than we are - it doesn't in any way mean they are less credible or serious as journalists (and often they are far more thorough investigators). The lead lines are attention grabbers that seem tabloid-ish to Americans since our serious news dailies are strictly subjective with news leads.