Media

HUME: When we come back with our panel, the memo that the left says the U.S. media won't talk about it. Well, we'll talk about it, next.

HUME: We're back with our panel.

It is regarded on the anti-war left as proof positive that President Bush intended from the start to go to war in Iraq and rigged American intelligence to support the case. It is called the Downing Street Memo, and it is such a focal point now that it even has its own Web site, www.downingstreetmemo.com.

Mort, what is the Downing Street Memo?

KONDRACKE: Well, the Downing Street Memo was an account of a secret...

By Robert Parry

The clues are falling into place, pointing to the incontrovertible judgment that George W. Bush willfully misled the United States into invading Iraq, in part, by eliminating the possibility of the peaceful solution that he pretended to want.

Many of the clues have been apparent for three years � and some were reported in outlets such as our own Consortiumnews.com in real time � but only recently have new revelations clarified this obvious reality for the slow-witted mainstream U.S. news media.

The latest piece of the puzzle was reported by Charles J. Hanley of the Associated Press in an article on June 4 describing how Bush�s Undersecretary of State John Bolton orchestrated the ouster of global arms control official Jose Bustani in early 2002 because Bustani�s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW] was making progress toward getting arms inspectors back into Iraq.

By Media Matters for America

On the June 5 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, moderator Tim Russert questioned but failed to correct Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman's claim that the "findings" of the Downing Street Memo, a secret British intelligence memo suggesting that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to support its case for war in Iraq, "have been totally discredited by everyone who's looked at it," including the 9-11 Commission and the Senate.

In fact, neither the 9-11 Commission nor the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence addressed the Bush administration's use of pre-war intelligence.

Bush officials mum despite calls for answers on Brit report
By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER, San Mateo County Times

It's been more than a month since The Times of London published a secret British government memo from mid-2002 describing the Bush administration's resolve to invade Iraq whether it posed a threat or not.
It's been about a month since 89 House Democrats � including six from the Bay Area � asked the president to explain himself in light of this memo.

And it's been almost three weeks since the White House press secretary said that isn't going to happen.

By Sean Gonsalves - Cape Cod Times

06.07.05 - Last week's big news story provides us with an alluring phrase to muse over.

As you probably already know, "Deep Throat" was the key anonymous source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the "Watergate" story that led to the downfall of President Nixon.

Woodward and Bernstein borrowed the phrase from the title of a popular porno flick of the 1970s, featuring Linda Lovelace.

The film brought in over a half billion dollars and, according to Lovelace's autobiography, she never saw a penny of that money. Even worse, in her autobiography Out of Bondage, she said the movie was actually a film of her rape because, she claimed, her husband at that time forced her to do the movie at gunpoint, according to the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (Third Edition).

Byron Williams - byronspeaks.com

06.07.05 - I was sitting at my local coffee hangout the day after it was revealed that 91-year-old W. Mark Felt, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, was the confidential source named "Deep Throat" that led to Watergate becoming a household name.

The individual sitting adjacent to me suggested that we need another Deep Throat today so that the world might know of possible shenanigans within the present White House administration.

I wondered privately: "Is that really necessary or possible?"

By The Record, NorthJersey.com

ALTHOUGH it shook Britain on the eve of Prime Minister Tony Blair's reelection last month, the "Downing Street memo" hasn't received much attention in this country.

It should.

The memo summarized the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of Mr. Blair's inner circle, including his defense secretary, foreign secretary and head of intelligence, to discuss U.S. plans for invading Iraq - assuming that British forces would take part.

The memo reveals this about the coming war:

Eight months before the invasion began, President Bush had already made up his mind to wage war on Iraq, even though he told the American people it would be a last resort.

By Arianna Huffington

As expected, the latest edition of Meet the Press, featuring RNC chair Ken Mehlman, was another classic example of why host Tim Russert is fast becoming journalism�s answer to the �E-ZPass,� those electronic tags that allow drivers to go through toll booths without having to stop.

On the show today, Mehlman was allowed to distort, twist, manipulate, obfuscate and "disassemble" his way through every stop on the disinformation highway.

The key to the E-ZPass method, as HuffPost reader Paul Harry points out, is no follow-ups -- or lame follow-ups quickly abandoned. And Mehlman is a master at dealing with those. His technique? Just repeat or slightly rephrase his talking point, and trust that Russert will give up, wave him on, and proceed to the next prepared question.

By Institute for Public Accuracy

Two days before Tony Blair's scheduled Tuesday meeting with President Bush in Washington, the chairman of the Republican National Committee faced questioning on NBC's "Meet the Press" about the festering Downing Street Memo scandal.

Tim Russert said: "This was a memo, July 23, 2002, from the head of British intelligence to Prime Minister Blair; in effect, notes taken from a briefing that was given to Prime Minister Blair after the head of British intelligence came back from a trip to Washington. It says this: '[The head of British Intelligence] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. 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.'"

The BBC has produced a documentary that US television news producers might want to learn from. Although aired weeks before the Sunday Times broke the story of the Downing Street Minutes, this program discussed those minutes without naming them.

BBC documentary "Iraq, Tony and the truth?" broadcast on BBC on March 20, 2005.

BBC page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/4332485.stm

Transcript:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/iraqtonyandthetruth.txt

Bush officials mum despite calls for answers on Brit report
The Argus, CA, By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER

It's been more than a month since The Times of London published a secret British government memo from mid-2002 describing the Bush administration's resolve to invade Iraq whether it posed a threat or not.
It's been about a month since 89 House Democrats � including six from the Bay Area � asked the president to explain himself in light of this memo.

And it's been almost three weeks since the White House press secretary said that isn't going to happen.

The Columbian (Vancouver, Washington), June 3, 2005 Friday
By GREGG HERRINGTON Columbian staff writer

Maybe it's presumptuous to attempt to describe where America's collective head is on any given day, other than those awful 9/11-type moments of national coming together. But I'm going to try anyway:

We're behaving the same way about Iraq that we act individually when faced with an unpleasant situation and ignore it in hopes it'll go away.

We're like a nervous father who doesn't risk alienating a teenage son by confronting him about his poor choice of friends, late hours and slipping grades. We're the wife who doesn't confront her husband about his increased drinking.

Duluth News-Tribune (Minnesota), June 5, 2005 Sunday
SECTION: EDIT
Ethics issues by EVE BROWNING

In a document known as the Downing Street Memo, released by the London Times in early May, evidence is given the George W. Bush and Tony Blair spoke frankly about cooking the intelligence reports on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, to make them appear to justify a war effort.

Ah, Watergate! Those were the good old days! Last week the identity of "Deep Throat" was revealed at last. Former FBI official W. Mark Felt stepped forward at the age of 91 to admit he provided inside information to the media concerning the misdeeds of the Nixon administration.

By Molly Ivins

San Gabriel Valley Tribune (San Gabriel Valley, CA)
June 6, 2005 Monday, SECTION: OPINION

AS a longtime fan of both George Bushes' eccentric grasp of English, I naturally enjoyed this gem from W.: "See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.'

[Bush in Greece, N.Y., May 24, once more explaining his Social Security plan to a town hall meeting of perfectly average citizens, except they had all been pre- screened to allow only those who agree with him into the hall.]

By Democracy Now!

The fallout from the revelation of a secret meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior national security team appears to be growing.

We take a look at the so-called "Downing Street Memo" which reveals how the former director of the British intelligence agency, MI6, told Prime Minister Tony Blair that the U.S. had already made plans to attack Iraq as early as July 2002.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was marked "Secret and strictly personal - UK eyes only." That was the header of the Downing Street memo that exposed a meeting in July 2002 between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior national security team. The text to the minutes of the secret briefing was published by the Sunday Times of London last month.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
Before America went to war with Afghanistan, another war was underway -- against its own people: the war to deceive American into attacking Iraq. This is no longer a theory or conjecture; it is a documented fact.

Those in the Mainstream Media, including the New York Times and Washington Post, who choose to ignore this reality, or couch it in qualifying terms (such as "unproven assertions") are no longer trying to debunk a conspiracy, because the deliberate deception that forced America into war with Iraq is not a conspiracy theory.

In fact, the evidence is so abundant and damning, it is those who deny the reality that the Bush Administration intentionally deceived America into a ruinous war based on calculated lies who are part of an untenable conspiracy theory. Yes, the Mainstream Media is right up there with the Raelists (if you recall them, they were a cult the media covered for days because the press believed their unfounded claims that they had cloned a human) when it comes to believability. Their job appears to be to create a conspiracy of credibility around Bush going to war, where none can exist to a person of common sense or integrity.

By Norman Solomon

You wouldn�t know it from the media focus on Deep Throat last week, but the lies that Richard Nixon told about the Watergate break-in were part of his standard duplicity for the Vietnam War.

It wasn�t just that the Nixon administration engaged in secret illegal actions against a wide range of peace advocates -- including antiwar candidate George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972. Deception was always central to Nixon�s war policy. Thirty-three years after Watergate, echoes of his fervent lies for war can be heard from George W. Bush.

By Dave Zweifel, The Capital Times, June 3, 2005

You may not have heard about the so-called "Downing Street memo" because the U.S. media haven't done much coverage of it.

The wire services with which The Capital Times contracts - the Washington Post/Los Angeles Times, Scripps Howard and the Associated Press - have moved few stories about the memo, which surfaced in the Sunday Times of London back on May 1. Consequently, we haven't had much about it either.

While the U.S. media have finally gotten around to lamenting the faked intelligence that the Bush people foisted on an unsuspecting public to grease the skids to go to war - something we wrote about nearly two years ago - the Downing Street memo is now flying under the radar screen.

6/4/2005, The Signal
Diana Sevanian Signal Staff Writer

If I had lost a loved one fighting in Iraq or currently had a soldier over there, I would be enraged over the Downing Street Memo. Even without that link, I am fuming about this formerly �extremely sensitive� and now public memorandum.

In case you�re unaware, the Downing Street Memo is the recently leaked minutes from a 2002 British government meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior national security team. It pertains to their intelligence analysts� concerns over President Bush�s determination to topple Saddam Hussein � despite �wobbly evidence� that Iraq posed a serious threat to its neighbors or to the United States.

By Arianna Huffington

Follow the Memo: Can Redford and Hoffman Play the Entire Blogosphere in the Downing Street Memo Movie?
In his otherwise terrific insider�s take on the Deep Throat story, former Washington Post editor and columnist Bob Levey says that the "next Watergate" won�t happen without "Big Journalism." I couldn�t disagree more. It will happen in spite of Big Journo... and because of the "little journalism" of the blogosphere.

Take the biggest under-reported story of the moment (at least in America): what the Downing Street Memo reveals about the Bush administration and how it led us into the Iraq war.

By Geov Parrish, Seattle Weekly

I have a three-word response to the media frenzy that followed revelation of the long-secret identity of Deep Throat: Downing Street Memo.

Here's what John Dean, a key Watergate figure, wrote about Dubya's case for the Iraq war in a June 2003 column for www.findlaw.com: "To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. . . . Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be a 'high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause."

Here's an article from the St. Petersburgh Times that was generated by a local demonstration at a TV station. Does that give any of you ideas?

Note that the reporter called me David Dawson, probably as a result of the quality of cell phone service in the hotel in DC where the Take Back America Conference chooses to convene. But, he quoted me accurately and he and his editors MENTIONED THE ISSUE AND DID SO HONESTLY. Please thank them!
--David Swanson

The "Downing Street Memo" indicates an agreement on invading Iraq in July 2002.
By KEVIN GRAHAM

Published on Friday, June 3, 2005 by the Bangor Daily News (Maine)
By Robert Shetterly

Let's consider an item from the news of about two weeks ago: A British citizen leaked a memo to London's Sunday Times.
The memo was of the written account of a meeting that a man named Richard Dearlove had with the Bush administration in July 2002. Dearlove was the head of the England's MI-6, the equivalent of the CIA. On July 23, 2002, Dearlove briefed Tony Blair about the meeting. He said that Bush was determined to attack Iraq. He said that Bush knew that U.S. intelligence had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no links to foreign terrorists, that there was no imminent danger to the U.S. from Iraq. But, since Bush was determined to go to war, "Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." "Fixed" means faked, manufactured, conjured, hyped - the product of whole cloth fabrication.

Watch the Washington Journal on C-Span from 7:45 - 8:30 a.m. ET Saturday June 4 for AfterDowningStreet.org Co-Founder Steve Cobble. And phone in to have your say!

WATCH VIDEO HERE

From Ezilon.com
By Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor
May 22, 2005, 10:09

The first witness account of the summit at which Tony Blair committed Britain to join the US-led war in Iraq is to be published later this year.

Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's former ambassador to Washington, is writing his memoirs, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.

The diplomat was present when Mr Blair met George Bush in the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in March 2002 and played a key role in the run-up to the war. His decision to go public will dismay Mr Blair who denies he agreed to "regime change" a year before the invasion.

Senator John Kerry has questioned the media silence on the Downing Street Minutes.

The Standard Times reports:

Sen. John F. Kerry yesterday called on Americans to be more aware of the "bait and switch" Iraq war and the "hollowing out" of the Army in the pursuit of a mistaken policy.

In a swing through SouthCoast, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee attacked the priorities of the Republican Party and President Bush, elaborating on what they are sacrificing -- health care for children, infrastructure, Social Security -- in the pursuit of tax cuts.

New York Review of Books
By Mark Danner
1.
It was October 16, 2002, and the United States Congress had just voted to authorize the President to go to war against Iraq.

When George W. Bush came before members of his Cabinet and Congress gathered in the East Room of the White House and addressed the American people, he was in a somber mood befitting a leader speaking frankly to free citizens about the gravest decision their country could make.

The 107th Congress, the President said, had just become "one of the few called by history to authorize military action to defend our country and the cause of peace." But, he hastened to add, no one should assume that war was inevitable. Though "Congress has now authorized the use of force," the President said emphatically, "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary." The President went on:

Investigative journalism is dead; long live investigative journalism.
By David J. Sirota, American Prospect, 6/2/05

Upon the news this week that Watergate source �Deep Throat� had come forward, CNN's Judy Woodruff waxed nostalgic about the golden era of muckraking journalism.

"It is so hard, I think, for young people we know who work here at CNN and other news organizations to even imagine what Watergate was like," she said. "To have a White House come undone, an administration come undone, because of some news reporting." Coming from a lead reporter at one of America's largest cable networks, it was truly a sad commentary.

By Institute for Public Accuracy

MIKE GRAVEL:
U.S. Senator from 1969-81, Gravel said today: "W. Mark Felt, the assistant director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal, has admitted to being 'Deep Throat.' He was the source of important information for Washington Post investigative reporters Woodward and Bernstein. Felt's revelations and tips kept the investigation alive by pulling back the shroud of secrecy hiding the criminal activities of the Nixon White House.
"Felt should receive the American Medal of Freedom for his courage and patriotism in defense of our democracy. The greatest threat to

He thinks they never will be, but we'll see about that!

Interview with British MP George Galloway
Interview by Thom Hartmann

[Thom Hartmann] George Galloway!

[Thom Hartmann] Thom Hartmann here with you on AM 620 KPOJ in Portland and we're also going to record this and play it on our national program. Thanks so much, Mr. Galloway for being with us today.

[George Galloway] You're most welcome.

[Thom Hartmann] First of all, my apologies if I have your title wrong. I'm calling you mister. Is that how?