Looks like we have another six Downing Street memos relevant to the administration's willingness to lie our way into war.
The operative word, here, of course, is "Six" -- as in MI6, Britain's CIA. Our own CIA leaked a few nuggets embarrassing to Bush, but only a few. These days, if you wont folks to pay attention to your message, you have to drown the journalistic world beneath a tsunami of leaked info. The Brits, it seems, understand the new rules.
(Appropos de rien, those of you who have always wondered why Patrick McGoohan was given that number may now be able to hazard a guess...)
The story was broken by Raw Story, which has done outstanding work recently. (Frankly, they've been leaving Salon in the dust.) Of course, you will also want to read the coverage on Brad Friedman's site.
The striking revelations:
1. The Bushite neocons had no idea whatsoever as to what to do with Iraq after conquest.
2. The timing for invasion was set in stone as of May of 2002.
3. No other nation on earth shared Bush's interpretation of the relevant U.N. resolutions.
4. References to United Nations resolutions in American oratory during the build-up to war were deliberately misleading.
5. The highest levels of the British government disbelieved the claimed Al Qaida/Iraq link. (To be fair, the "linkage" rhetoric was disseminated not so much by the administration itself, but by its supporters.)
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Representative John Conyers will be holding unofficial hearings on Thursday. Rep. Conyers has written to Bush demanding an
explanation, and his letter has been signed by 88 other members of Congress and 540,000
citizens.
You can sign too.
Check out the memo at downingstreetmemo.com or go right to Rep. Conyers's site to sign:
http://www.johnconyers.campaignoffice.com/
Whether there are 6 or 60 memos, don't hold your breath. David E. Sanger of The New York Times drew the remarkable conclusion from this latest offering that the Bush adminstration hadn't made a "political decision" to invade Iraq in July 2002 (despite its military preparations), and that the memo was therefore a vindication of the Bush Administration, and an implicit refutation of its critics re: the "Downing Street Memo".
Hard to believe, but it's in yesterday's NYT. There are "respected journalists" so disposed to legitimize American abuses of power and violations of law that they themselves don't know how intellectually corrupt they've become.
The only thing which will satisfy the American media is a tape of Bush bragging that he lied about WMD and started planning the invasion the day after his inauguration. Even then, the highly paid professionals who filter our news for us would find an excuse for it.
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