War Is A Crime .org

See this front page:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/sites/afterdowningstreet.org/images/ab...

By Cynthia Bogard

I think I witnessed history last Thursday, June 16, 2005.

It didn't start off on a very promising note. I was denied entrance to the media-packed, basement room next door to where they stack dirty Capitol cafeteria trays. But as I was standing in the hall wondering what to do, Congressman Conyers passed by and we nodded to each other right before he stepped across the threshold of the closet-sized room, jaw set, determined to change the course of our forlorn nation. He was followed by some of the other 122 Congressional signers of the letter asking President Bush for an explanation of the contents of the Downing Street Memo.

To the Editor:

Re: Memos, 'Wing Nuts' and 'Hit Lists' by Michael Getler, June 19

On behalf of more than 300,000 supporters of Democrats.com, I write to
express my outrage over Dana Milbank's libelous charge that our "followers
have long been harassing this and other reporters and their families with
hateful, obscene and sometimes anti-Semitic speech."

Democrats.com strictly prohibits personal attacks and takes immediate
action against anyone who violates this rule.

Mr. Milbank never documented any personal attacks from Democrats.com
supporters, so I am appalled that you published the allegation as though

Imagine that the Pentagon Papers or the Watergate scandal had broken out all over the press -- no, not in the New York Times or the Washington Post, but in newspapers in Australia or Canada. And that, facing their own terrible record of reportage, of years of being cowed by the Nixon administration, major American papers had decided that this was not a story worthy of being covered. Imagine that, initially, they dismissed the revelatory documents and information that came out of the heart of administration policy-making; then almost willfully misread them, insisting that evidence of Pentagon planning for escalation in Vietnam or of Nixon administration planning to destroy its opponents was at best ambiguous or even nonexistent; finally, when they found that the documents wouldn't go away, they acknowledged them more formally with a tired ho-hum, a knowing nod on editorial pages or in news stories. Actually, they claimed, these documents didn't add up to much because they had run stories just like this back then themselves. Yawn.

Scott Ritter, Aljazeera.net

Sunday 19 June 2005 - Americans, along with the rest of the world, are starting to wake up to the uncomfortable fact that President George Bush not only lied to them about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the ostensible excuse for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of that country by US forces), but also about the very process that led to war.

On 16 October 2002, President Bush told the American people that "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope that the use of force will not become necessary."

We know now that this statement was itself a lie, that the president, by late August 2002, had, in fact, signed off on the 'execute' orders authorising the US military to begin active military operations inside Iraq, and that these orders were being implemented as early as September 2002, when the US Air Force, assisted by the British Royal Air Force, began expanding its bombardment of targets inside and outside the so-called no-fly zone in Iraq.

By Warren P. Strobel
KNIGHT RIDDER

WASHINGTON - Highly classified documents leaked in Britain appear to provide new evidence that President Bush and his national security team decided to invade Iraq much earlier than they have acknowledged and marched to war without dwelling on the potential perils.

The half-dozen memos and option papers, written by top aides to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, buttress previous on-the-record accounts that portray Bush and his advisers as predisposed to oust Saddam Hussein when they took office -- and determined to do it at all costs after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

BTC News White House correspondent Eric Brewer, the first correspondent to introduce the Downing Street Memo at a White House briefing, has been following the number of results returned by a Google search for the phrase, “Downing Street Memo.

The Downing Street Memo

Michael Smith
Reporter, Sunday Times of London
Thursday, June 16, 2005; 10:00 AM

Two top-secret British documents that were leaked to the press recently suggest that the Bush administration "fixed" intelligence about Iraq and that actions at the United Nations were designed to give legal cover to British Prime Minister Tony Blair before an invasion to oust Saddam Hussein .

Michael Smith, a reporter for the Sunday Times of London, has led the coverage, starting with his report of the so-called Downing Street Memo on May 1.

Smith was online Thursday, June 16, at 10 a.m. ET to discuss the Downing Street Memo and his reporting.

SPEECH OUTSIDE WHITE HOUSE – JUNE 16, 2005
BY REG KEYS

I have journeyed here today from England to offer a hand across the water. A hand of friendship and support to form a bond of unity with America, like ours a proud nation.

For as well as great pride in our countries we have deep concern over the conduct of our country’s leaders. Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush have both acted dishonorably and brought the integrity of our proud nations into disrepute. Taking us to war on a falsehood.

They have both knowingly mislead Parliament and Congress, our people, and worst of all our brave troops who have put their lives at risk, many returning home in coffins, the result of this unnecessary war with Iraq. We have been thrown into conflicts on the basis of fabricated intelligence reports and deceit over Iraq’s WMD capability.

David Michael Green

So much is spot on in Robert Parry's discussion of the media and the Downing
Street Memos scandal. But not (necessarily) his conclusion.

Parry's certainly been around, and around the capital block, longer than I
have, but I remain considerably more hopeful than he does about the ultimate
power of the DSM revelations.

Let's recap this fast-unfolding mini-story. It begins with 'congressional
hearings' held on Thursday by Congressman John Conyers, along with thirty or
forty other House Democrats. Of course, they weren't real hearings, since
Republicans couldn't possibly be less interested in investigating the topic

Keeping the Downing Street Drums Beating.

By Anthony Wade

June 18, 2005

www.OpEdNews.com

“You can’t just say the President is lying.

Watch her wiggle:

RAM

WMV

Attacks preceded congressional OK
- Paul Rogat Loeb
Sunday, June 19, 2005
San Francisco Chronicle

It's bad enough that the Bush administration had so little international support for the Iraqi war that its "coalition of the willing" meant the United States, Britain, and the equivalent of a child's imaginary friends.

It's even worse that, as the British Downing Street memo confirms, the administration had so little evidence of real threats that officials knew from the start that they were going to have to manufacture excuses to go to war. What's more damning still is that they effectively began this war even before the congressional vote.

By Byron Williams, CONTRIBUTOR
Inside Bay Area

FOR those keeping score, today's column marks the seventh time I have written about the infamous 2002 "Downing Street memo."

The memo in question is the clearest evidence to date that the administration "fixed" the intelligence to justify a pre-emptive war.

I have received a number of e-mails that raise the question, "Why is the memo important now?" Does our presence in Iraq render the memo irrelevant?

In addition to the Downing Street memo, the Los Angeles Times recently reported that according to newly released British memos, the Bush administration had begun to publicly raise the possibility of confronting Iraq in March 2002 — a year before the actual conflict.

San Francisco Chronicle

His ratings drop as a few GOP leaders ask for exit strategy

Washington -- Bloggers are circulating articles of impeachment. Democrats are demanding an exit strategy from Iraq. And even a few Republicans are openly questioning President Bush's execution of the war on terror.

As Bush appealed for patience in the quest for peace in Iraq during his radio address Saturday, there were signs that Americans are growing increasingly restless with war.

By nearly every measure of public opinion, support for U.S. involvement in Iraq has diminished with each passing month since American troops toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein and claimed victory in Baghdad in April 2003.

Read This:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/17/235914/273

Sunday Times of London
Michael Smith

A SHARP increase in British and American bombing raids on Iraq in the run-up to war “to put pressure on the regime

check out the AP story by Thomas Wagner June 19 on Yahoo, and note the trivialization of their concern by the use of the word "fretting."

Published Saturday, June 18th on WorldNetDaily.com
By Gordon Prathers

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

By now, all members of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction ought to have fallen on their swords.

Why?

Here is the way the commissioners began their report made to President Bush just a month before the London Sunday Times published the so-called Downing Street Memo.

On the brink of war, and in front of the whole world, the United States government asserted that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, had biological weapons and mobile biological weapon production facilities, and had stockpiled and was producing chemical weapons.

Four days ago, MSNBC posted an article about Microsoft being "under fire" for banning the words 'freedom' and 'democracy' in China, at the government's request, despite the fact that the newsmedia is owned by Microsoft.

Today, MSNBC ran the Downing Street Memo on their front page, with millions of MSNBC viewers and Hotmail users recieving notice:

Being daring enough to challenge the Pre

Published on Saturday, June 18, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Ken Sanders

Under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution's impeachment clause, and the historical application thereof, leads to the inescapable conclusion that articles of impeachment should be brought against President Bush for his commission of high crimes against the United States.

By Robert Parry
June 18, 2005

If American progressives think they have enough media clout to make a real issue of George W. Bush’s possible impeachment over the Iraq War, they should read the account of Rep. John Conyers’s rump hearing on the Downing Street Memo that appeared in the Washington Post.

The story by political correspondent Dana Milbank drips with a sarcasm that would never be allowed for a report on, say, a conservative gathering or on a topic involving any part of the American political spectrum other than the Left.

“In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe,

By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Friday, June 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — Several parents of soldiers killed in Iraq visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ask for congressional hearings on the Downing Street memo, which one mother called President Bush’s “Watergate.

LA Times
By John Hendren and Cynthia H. Cho
Times Staff Writers

June 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — Apprehension over the war in Iraq surged Thursday as a group of lawmakers demanded that President Bush develop plans to withdraw troops and a top Pentagon official expressed concern about sagging public support for the U.S. military effort.

After a deadly increase in violence in Iraq, congressional critics of the war grew more vocal in demanding a change in policy, and antiwar activists staged a rally near the White House.

The White House said Bush planned to deliver a speech this month on the importance of the U.S. mission, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged to work harder to explain the administration's objectives.

Downing Street memos on Iraq
DenverPost.com

Another confidential British memo has surfaced to fan fresh criticism about the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war. This time, the issue is whether the Bush administration ignored warnings to plan for the war's complicated aftermath.

The document, like another British memo - the so-called Downing Street memo that was leaked last month - echoes reports from 2002 when experts predicted a quick U.S. military victory followed by a difficult period of stabilizing Iraq. Even then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell worried that the Defense Department wasn't doing enough post-war planning.

By FAIR
June 17, 2005

One of the features of the newfound media interest in the Downing Street Memo is a profound defensiveness, as reporters scramble to explain why it received so little attention in the U.S. press. But the most familiar line--the memo wasn't news because it contained no "new" information--only raises troubling questions about what journalists were doing when they should have been reporting on the gulf between official White House pronouncements and actual White House intentions.

There are two important points in the Downing Street Memo, and media apologists have marshaled slightly different--though equally unconvincing--arguments as to why each did not deserve coverage. The first point is that the White House was intent on going to war long before it announced the decision to invade Iraq; "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action," the memo states, citing British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Dear Sirs:

I write to express my profound disappointment with Dana Milbank's June 17 report, "Democrats Play House to Rally Against the War," which purports to describe a Democratic hearing I chaired in the Capitol yesterday. In sum, the piece cherry-picks some facts, manufactures others out of whole cloth, and does a disservice to some 30 members of Congress who persevered under difficult circumstances, not of our own making, to examine a very serious subject: whether the American people were deliberately misled in the lead up to war. The fact that this was the Post's only coverage of this event makes the journalistic shortcomings in this piece even more egregious.

By Joy Williams, member, AfterDowningStreet.org

On June 16th Rep. John Conyers and 122 other members of Congress presented a letter to the White House which included 5 simple yes or no questions regarding the Downing Street Memo, which were minutes from a meeting between the British Prime Minister and his top advisors -- and indicate that Bush was already committed to going to war by the summer of 2002 and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" -- meaning they made up evidence to go to war.

. These five questions were first asked on May 5th and were the following:

Thirty-five Congress Members attended a hearing organized by AfterDowningStreet.org and Congressman John Conyers. The hearing examined the question of whether there is good cause to investigate possible impeachable offenses by the President in his justification of the war.

Dear Dana,

What's happened to you? You were often quite good when you were on the Post's White House beat...perceptive�occasionally even courageous�especially in exposing White House dishonesty. Is that why you were taken off that beat and assigned yesterday to trivialize the historic proceedings in the Capitol basement and Congressman Conyers' courage in convening them?

You used to get your facts straight, at least. It appears that in your new assignment meticulousness is not a requirement. Even your "search of the congressional record" concerning mention of the Downing Street Minutes came up short. Do you not consider Sen. Harry Reid a member of Congress?