It should have been predictable. Faced with growing attention to the Downing Street Minutes and other leaked British documents about the run-up to the Iraq war, the right-wingers are trying to discredit them as "fakes". The ostensible basis for their nonsensical claims is that the particular copies of the documents that have been made public are not the originals (which were returned to protect the source) but re-typed copies.
The prize for best effort must go to the Captain's Quarters, which relies on a hair-splitting distinction between "fake" and "fraud". The documents are "fakes", CQ insists, because they're not the originals, even if the content is in fact a perfectly accurate transcription of the originals. While the distinction might be meaningful in some other context, such as an auction of historic documents, it is immaterial as applied to these documents, which are valuable not as artifacts, but as factual records. But, sputters CQ, because the documents are not originals, it isn't possible to authenticate them. Never mind that, as has been widely reported, they have indeed been authenticated by multiple sources including U.S. and British government officials who have verified their accuracy.
Of course, CQ and his ilk aren't interested in the facts and there's no value in trying to reason with them. Instead, we should take the opportunity to hoist them by their own petard (an apt nautical metaphor for the Captain). Will they now admit that the Bible is a "fake"? After all, it exists only in copies, and nobody has ever produced the original for authentication!
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