Is it really "news" if it's not new?

So the New York Times is running a big story headlined Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says, as if it's news. The only real news here is that they're treating it like it's news. As it happens, The Guardian covered the story in February, as did a whole lot of bloggers, many of whom had been covering a little thing known as The Downing Street Memos for, ahem, quite some time. Suffice it to say, the reaction to the Times' piece is a bit, uh, jaded in some quarters.

Cernig at NewsHog:

The New York Times is finally playing catch-up.

Today their leader deals with one of the Downing Street documents already familiar to every Briton - and to American readers of progressive blogs…

Bravo for finally catching up, chaps.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast:

The information about the Downing Street Memos has been out for almost a year, but only now that George W. Bush's approval ratings are in the toilet does the New York Times see fit to cover them.

Elsewhere, we find more expressions of frustration about the Right's enablement and when, at long last, enough will be enough.

Maha:

When The Guardian reported last February about another Downing Street memo in which President Bush suggested luring Saddam Hussein into war by “flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours,” there was much scoffing and hoo-hawing from the Right.

But today the New York Times reveals that the memo is real.

Susie at Suburban Guerrilla:

We are losing our country before our very eyes. The press is gingerly climbing on board but it may be too late. The paycheck economy (the one that affects most of us) has been devastated; we live in constant uncertainty. Most countries hate us. The world climate is rapidly decomposing while the administration still plays semantic games.

They are smash-and-grab thugs whose mantra is greed and whose weapons are ballpoint pens and electronic voting machines.

Sometimes it’s so frustrating, I feel as if every major organ in my body will explode. What, exactly, is that will finally let people know enough is enough? When the Pentagon calls in airstrikes on their own suburban development?

And, finally, contemptuous exasperation.

Drum at Washington Monthly, responding to the contents of the memo:

Yes, that's the president of the United States talking about deliberately faking a UN overflight in order to provoke a phony confrontation with Saddam—or if that didn't work, trotting out a defector to lie about Iraqi WMD. Honor and dignity, baby, honor and dignity.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)