Kinsley’s Sloppy Downing Street Whitewash

On the Washington Post Op-Ed page this morning, Michael Kinsley – an editor at the LA Times – dismisses the controversy over the Downing Street Minutes as the product of an “overhang of extremists” in “the blogosphere.”

Kinsley discounts the Minutes because they were based on meetings by the head of British foreign intelligence (known as C) “in Washington.” As a result, the Minutes recount the conclusions of “people other than Bush” and aren’t worth our attention. But even Kinsley admits that C may have been meeting with “actual administration decision makers.” (Why would the head of British foreign intelligence brief Tony Blair – as Kinsley suggests is likely – about meetings with “freelance chatterboxes”?)