Downing Street Memo Gathers More Steam
Downing Street Memo Gathers More Steam
Kudos to the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus for writing a piece this weekend on a subject that few journalists seem to truly want to explore. Pincus uses the Downing Street memo as an opportunity to summarize some of the facts which strongly indicate that the Bush White House intentionally used false or weak evidence to convince an unwilling public to go to war with Iraq.
Despite the formation of a variety of commissions that have looked at the pre-war intelligence, not a single one has had the primary purpose of answering to the question of whether the White House knowingly manipulated intelligence. The Senate Intelligence Committee was supposed to have explored that question, but an agreement was reached between Pat Roberts and John Rockefeller to release their findings in two stages: the first would detail the shortcomings of the intelligence community (and was to be released prior to the 2004 campaign); the second part examining the White House’s pressure and manipulation of evidence was left for a later date.
When the first part of the Senate Intelligence Committee report was released in July 2004, Sen. Rockefeller acknowledged that it “fail[ed] to fully explain the environment of intense pressure in which the intelligence community officials were asked to render judgments on matters relating to Iraq….”
When Tim Russert asked Roberts whether he could produce the second part of the report before the election, Roberts said: “I don’t know if we can get it done before the election. It is more important to get it right.” It took Roberts approximately eight months to go back on his word, when upon release of the President’s Intelligence Commission report (which did not look specifically at administration pressure), he said: “I think that it would be a monumental waste of time to re-plow this ground any further.”
Hopefully, reporters will continue to find that it is not and should not be a waste of their time to get to the heart of whether the Bush White House knowingly deceived the American public into a war about which they had (and continue to have) deep reservations.
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The Downing Street memo for me is proof enough that Bushie orchestrated the WMD falicy.
I am so bold to say that I believe that Bushie was involved with the 9-11 attack also.
Where’s Osama Bin Laden?…He’ll never be caught as that was part of the deal, right?
I hope I sparked a new and energized debate on the crimes of Bushie.
May 23rd, 2005 at 2:20 pmWe’ll see. More credit still, for now, to online journals that have shamed the MSM into stepping up. That, and volunteer army of bloggers who also refused to let the matter die.
‘Bout time more MSM types started meeting their responsibilities.
May 23rd, 2005 at 2:24 pmjust remember that it took almost a year for Watergate to gather enough press. I just hope that this is still around in 18 months before the mid-term congressional elections. I am stoked that Tom Delay will still be around for Mid-terms.
May 23rd, 2005 at 2:27 pmThey are “MINUTES,” not a MEMO!
May 23rd, 2005 at 2:32 pmCorrect, “liberal elite,” but commonly referred to in press as “the Downing Street memo.” Hence that usage to aviod confusion continues here. Some MSM refs?
May 23rd, 2005 at 2:36 pmdebating the semantics of memo vs minutes does not change the underlying context of the report. Still true is the Bush admin talked up the wmd and other aspects to make a case for war.
May 23rd, 2005 at 2:49 pmPoor Intelligence
May 23rd, 2005 at 3:46 pmFaiz at Think Progress is correct.
Keep beating those drums. The so-called Downing Street Memo is the first hard evidence of what Bush and his poodles did. I think Pat Roberts and Rockefeller deserve some e-mails on this subject, don’t you?
May 23rd, 2005 at 4:15 pmI hate to be harsh, but all of this stuff in the
May 23rd, 2005 at 6:47 pmDS “Memits”, as I’ll call it, is stuff any person without his or her head up the butt should have known from the get go. Bush is a terrible liar and can be read like a book…a really stupid, stupid book.
Nevertheless, the “Memits” are the hard proof that has been missing from the equation all along. It needs to be treated like plutonium: it is extremely powerful, very delicate, very dangerous, and should in no way be allowed to slip away and disappear.
As a side note, It’s hilarious to think of how badly BushCo is crapping their pants about this. McLellan might be able to mumble and bumble his BS while the nerve center is scrambling to come up with a much more solid lie, but they’re definitely crapping their pants.
Yes, this is un-spinnable proof that Bushco deliberately and premeditatively MANUFACTURED LIES in order to TRICK the United States Congress into letting him START A WAR.
Premeditated lies, in order to get permission to KILL OTHER PEOPLE.
Go here to take action:
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/takeact ion.html
I highly recommend the DU “media blaster”. It works incredibly well.
Also, ask your SENATORS they’re doing about this?
Ask them why is Conyers, in the house, doing all the heavy lifting on this issue?
EVERYBODY in the Senate should be outraged over this.
Tell them you will hold them accountable!
May 23rd, 2005 at 11:42 pmhttp://www.downingstreetmemo.com/takeaction.html
Fixed link.
Can you edit posts here?
May 23rd, 2005 at 11:43 pm‘Minutes’ is of course MORE significant than ‘memo.’
The primary action needed is for EVERYONE to duplicate the Conyers’ letter or the memo itself, and distribute it as befits a smoking gun.
The Senators who work closely with Conyers (such as Boxer) are well aware of this development, but political power is not derived by suicide votes that prove a lack of power.
Knowing that this is a coup, people must decide either to SUPPORT the Dems (while working HARD at grassroots efforts) and hope the DC Dems can find a way to obstruct and slow the progress of the coup, or not. Expressing outrage isn’t going to get more done at their end, because they are really up against it, and have been, since Wellstone was murdered, and since Daschle received anthrax, etc.
Support your Dems, stay positive as far as they are concerned, because we need them. But don’t expect that they will be able to do much. It is on us, and on our states, to repair the voting system, ban Diebold, and work to DISCREDIT the Bushies, and keep the criminal justice pressure on.
May 24th, 2005 at 2:04 amI’m not talking about suicide votes, I’m talking about going on television and TALKING about it.
I’m talking about holding press conferences, I’m talking about staging publicity stunts, I’m talking about having “our” pundits getting on the talk shows and making a BFD about this.
the repubs are really good at this, why do the Democrats basically completely IGNORE it?
Drives me nuts.
The biggest failure of the Democratic Party in recent years is its failure to use the media as it exists now. Sure, the media is stacked against them, but it’s easily manipulated.
So why are they so utterly clueless about how to manipulate it?
May 24th, 2005 at 2:34 pmPhil,
That’s what I’ve been asking, and it has raised no end of angst from the young “progressives” on this blog. The dems shot themselves in the feet so many times in the weeks before the election, it wasn’t even funny.
Even with an overwhelmingly left-leaning media (except talk radio), the left mills about, seemingly at a loss for what position to take on anything.
Meanwhile, the GOP hands out generous freebies to everyone, trashes gay marriage, adopts family values, apple pie, and hot dogs, and wins hands down.
Sad. Not sad that the dems got thrashed. Just sad that they put up such a lame fight.
May 24th, 2005 at 11:01 pmCan anyone explain to me why the Media is silent about this memo?
Is it fear of entertaining the possibility that Bush is actually as maquiavelic as that?
Or that the Media, left and right, is so unconditional pro american that they are afraid to bring actual truth before the American Public?
I do not know. Help me here.
May 25th, 2005 at 11:48 am[...] r intelligence. Why? Because Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) has blocked the planned examination of the administration’s role in shaping pre-war intel, saying it w [...]
June 22nd, 2005 at 1:38 pmWhats more disturbing (being a Britisher) is that PM Blair must have read the memo (BTW Minutes OF the memo released 1st May, Memo released later on) and then gone “intelligence fixed around the facts, link between Iraq and Al Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing, Military action now seen as inevitable? Thats our guy! he’s the one we want to follow! Illegal war with no justification? thats our bag baby!”
I mean, what did baby Bush promise him? “stick with me, you’ll go down in history” ?
PS is it me, or are the US democrats just taking up space reserved for Outspoken, free thinking supporters of Liberty and Freedom?
June 24th, 2005 at 11:48 am[...] As has been previously documented by ThinkProgress and others, the answer to whether there was political pressure was left to phase II of the investigation and was not addressed in the report. [...]
November 11th, 2005 at 1:49 pm[...] As has been previously documented by ThinkProgress and others, the answer to whether there was political pressure was left to phase II of the investigation and was not addressed in the report. [...]
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