the Downing St. memos

[Mazer]

Ah, to be deaf and smug is pure happiness, no?

[albed]

No need to hear others when you know everything.










Except what you need to know most.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by albed

No need to hear others when you know everything.

Except what you need to know most.

sadly true. hopefully the next president won't be so tragically flawed.

but this explains a lot:

One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency. - George Bush, as told to Mickey Herskowitz, 1999 A Charge to Keep : My Journey to the White House

obviously, the Prez decided a long time ago that launching and waging war, preferably in Iraq, was a prerequisite to being a great president. he got all the political capital he needed on 9/11 and spent it in Iraq.

As told to Herskowitz, Bush and his advisors were quite impressed -- politically speaking, of course -- with the minor military victories of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (the Falklands War) and former presidents Ronald Reagan and dear old dad (the first Gulf War was a bad scene, as mentioned, but the Grenada and Panama “campaigns” were terrific political coups). Said Herskowitz of Bush & Co.’s view of Thatcher: "They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at her and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches." Looking back further, they believed Jimmy Carter's political troubles emerged as the inherent result of a peaceful presidency.

ah, this explains Cheney's "dancing in the streets of Baghdad, greeting us as liberators" fantasy.

So what a successful presidency came down to for Bush, according to Herskowitz, was this: “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.” Once accomplished the chief executive will have secured the support needed for ramming through his domestic agenda. Seen through this lens, then, 9/11 for George W. Bush wasn’t so much tragedy as opportunity. He had his “chance to invade.”

which is why the Downing St. documents Minutes (they are actually not a memo, but rather minutes of a meeting with the head of British intelligence) dovetail perfectly with every aspect of the run-up to the war. from PMCarpenter:

the Bush interviews reveal that the president was genuinely fixated on war as a policy staple -- it would secure what you might call a permanent revolution. Nothing was to be left to chance. Peace presented a constant political threat.

Now of course we have the Downing Street Memo as proof that we would have war -- justified or not, necessary or not. Thousands of lives for “political capital” -- Bush's “basic essence.”

[theknife]

The Freeway Blogger strikes again:

[Mazer]

The impeachment of George W. Bush is a matter for Congress, not the media.

Somebody please inform the Freeway Blogger.

[theknife]

it will take the media to light a fire under this Congress.... but this story just will not go away.

from the links above, from news outlets all around country, all within the last 48 hours:

Put aside the question of "fixed" intelligence. The DSM demonstrates that Bush was dishonest with the public about his intentions and that the intelligence he did have in hand--fixed or not, faulty or not--did not support the case for war. I can understand why conservative cheerleaders of the war don't want such matters being discussed. But to call the Downing Street memo an item of no importance is to descend into the land of total spin.

As C's comments are summarized, he had found in Washington that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of going to war to remove Saddam, "justified by
the conjunction of terrorism and WMD"; C went on: "Military action was now [as of July 2002] seen as inevitable." According to comments attributed to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, "The case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

There we have it in black and white: Bush lied about WMD and cooked the intelligence to support his position. At last, proof enough to start the impeachment proceedings.

PRESIDENT BUSH apparently thinks he can dismiss the damning "Downing Street memo" with a few glib words.

If he is right, it is a sad commentary on the state of American democracy and values.

Weeks after it dominated front pages in Europe, the so-called Downing Street Memo finally has bored its way into the U.S. press. The 2002 document describes comments by Britain's intelligence chief, Richard Dearlove, concerning talks with U.S. officials eight months before the invasion of Iraq. Identifying Dearlove as "C," the leaked memo summarizes his report: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

After six weeks in the political wilderness, the Downing Street Memo yesterday finally burst into the White House -- and into the headlines.

The memo, which dates back to 2002, conveys a British intelligence official's conclusion that President Bush was manipulating intelligence to build support for war with Iraq -- and that he was already set on invasion long before acknowledging as much in public

A simmering controversy over whether U.S. media have ignored a secret British memo about how President Bush built his case for war with Iraq bubbled over into the White House this week.

At a Tuesday news conference, Reuters correspondent Steve Holland asked Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about a memo that's been widely written about and discussed in Europe but less so in the United States.

It was the most attention paid by the U.S. media so far to the "Downing Street memo," first reported May 1 by The Sunday Times of London. The memo is said by some of the president's sharpest critics, such as Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, to be strong evidence that Bush decided to go to war and then looked for evidence to support his decision

...and on and on.

[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Ah, to be deaf and smug is pure happiness, no?

Yes it is, especially if you are projecting your uneasyness about your prez on this situation

[theknife]

the Downing St. Minutes are only a part of the picture....there's lots more:

Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’
Michael Smith

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

this means that Bush and Blair were both lying at last week's joint press conference:

"Look, both of us didn't want to use our military," Mr. Bush added. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Mr. Blair, standing at Mr. Bush's side in a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House, said, "No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all."

Michigan Congressman John Conyers opens congressional hearings next week on the Downing Street Minutes.

the ongoing leak of these various documents to the British press suggests a faction within the British government is determined to set the record straight. watch for corroboration from the US side under similar circumstances.

[Mazer]

I'll be waiting. We'll see if the "secrets" these rags are publishing actually lead anywhere.

[TankGirl]

I don't know how well the Bush administration managed to spin its domestic media and consequently the perception of American audiences - maybe some Americans are genuinely surprised of what the memo has revealed. For European audiences there's hardly anything surprising - this is precisely how things looked to Europeans (despite their political standing) already months before the war: Bush was hell bent to go to war and would find any excuses to do so, and Blair was following him like an obedient poodle. It would of course be nice if the leaders of important western democracies would not lie blatantly to their citizens to excuse wars that will inevitably cause lot of death and destruction but I suppose most people don't simply expect such moral integrity from politicians these days.

- tg

[theknife]

Originally Posted by TankGirl

I don't know how well the Bush administration managed to spin its domestic media and consequently the perception of American audiences - maybe some Americans are genuinely surprised of what the memo has revealed. For European audiences there's hardly anything surprising - this is precisely how things looked to Europeans (despite their political standing) already months before the war: Bush was hell bent to go to war and would find any excuses to do so, and Blair was following him like an obedient poodle. It would of course be nice if the leaders of important western democracies would not lie blatantly to their citizens to excuse wars that will inevitably cause lot of death and destruction but I suppose most people don't simply expect such moral integrity from politicians these days.

- tg

the documents coming out now confirm what most people already suspected. but taken as part of a larger picture, combined with the testimony of people like Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, and Ambassador Joeseph Wilson, they demonstrate a pattern of manipulation and deception on the part of the administration. this has been rising up to the surface of the public consciousness as the public looks at the mess we have created in Iraq, looks at the rising death toll (25 more soldiers died this week), look at the bleak future there, and righteously asks "how did we get into this?"

since it has become painfully obvious we were misled into the war, we were and continue to be lied to about the decision to go to war, and we were completely unprepared for the consequences of this decision, it is just possible the US public has had enough.

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by theknife

it is just possible the US public has had enough.

If this singular piece of damning evidence is all it takes to convince the public, then you're right. As I said, I'm still curious to see what will happen and at this point I won't make any predictions.

[albed]

Originally Posted by Mazer

I'll be waiting. We'll see if the "secrets" these rags are publishing actually lead anywhere.

Without Dan Rather promoting them, they just don't reach enough dumb, gullible people anymore.