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Several more high-level British government memos, authored by such authoritative figures as Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and dating from the period between 9/11/01 and the meeting in July 2002 which begot the DSM, have found their way into the public arena, perhaps (one guesses) exposed by the same party or parties who gave us the DSM 6 weeks ago. Although portions of these documents have been floating around for a couple days, we at DowningStreetMemo have been waiting for some reliable indication that they are authentic before commenting on them. Tonight, NBC has declared them 'verified by NBC News' and that, along with both their internal and their external consistency, persuades us to call them to your attention.

A 'teaser', cited by Andrea Mitchell in the MSNBC story:

In yet another 2002 memo, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asked, “What will this action achieve? Can (there) be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better? Iraq has had no history of democracy.”

The complete collection of documents, 2 of which are presented in PDF format and the others in text (with PDF links available), has been published at RawStory.com, to whom a big congratulations from all of us here.

Since our brief here is the Downing Street Memo - which is still the core document, summarizing officially the central planning meeting of Tony Blair with his closest foreign affairs advisers on 23 July 2002 - we will over the next 24 hours be studying these newly uncovered items from that perspective and reporting to you specifically on the light each may shine on and the support each may give - or not give - to that document.

From a quick scan, this looks like an exciting undertaking. For those who can't wait, please hie yourselves to The Raw Story and prepare to come back and participate in our discussions, that we may 'reason together'. For all others, keep checking back here as summaries and analyses of the individual items will be popping up unpredictably until we feel we have fulfilled our obligation to you for the trust you have given us these many (5? seems like many!) weeks.

Check back often!
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