Media

By LAWRENCE M. O'ROURKE
McClatchy Newspapers
June 16, 2005

WASHINGTON - House Democrats opposed to the Iraq war came together Thursday to draw more public attention to the so-called "Downing Street Memo," the British government document that advised Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush was determined to invade Iraq nearly a year before the war was launched.

On the Senate side of the Capitol, Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., cited the memo Thursday in further holding up Bush's nominee for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. Reid and Senate Democrats have demanded a full accounting of whether Bolton exaggerated assessments of several countries' weapons programs.

British Memo Suggests Administration Misled Nation
Associated Press

Amid new questions about President Bush�s drive to topple Saddam Hussein, several House Democrats urged lawmakers on Thursday to conduct an official inquiry to determine whether the president intentionally misled Congress.

At a public forum where the word �impeachment� loomed large, Exhibit A was the so-called Downing Street memo, a prewar document leaked from inside the British government to The Sunday Times of London a month and a half ago. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, organized the event.

BY RUBY L. BAILEY AND ELY PORTILLO
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - A hearing Thursday on a secret British intelligence memo that said President Bush was committed to waging war on Iraq months before he said so publicly ended with a request for Congress to open an inquiry into whether Bush should be impeached for misleading the nation.

"All we're asking is to know the truth," said John Bonifaz, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet,org. "Some of his supporters want to say it's a question of failed intelligence. If that's all it was, so be it."

New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, June 16 - Opponents of the war in Iraq held an unofficial hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday to draw attention to a leaked British government document that they say proves their case that President Bush misled the public about his war plans in 2002 and distorted intelligence to support his policy.

In a jammed room in the basement of the Capitol, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, presided as witnesses asserted that the "Downing Street memo" - minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top security officials - vindicated their view that Mr. Bush made the decision to topple Saddam Hussein long before he has admitted.

By Eric Alterman
June 16, 2005

On Wednesday afternoon, Rep. John Conyers Jr., ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, held his own set of hearings on the "Downing Street Memo" and other evidence pointing to the conclusion that the Bush and Blair administrations cooked the books on pre-war intelligence in Iraq.

Later the same day, at Lafayette Square Park in front of the White House, activists held a rally to call attention to the memo and the fact that Conyers plans to deliver to the White House a letter signed by over 500,000 Americans and more than 90 members of Congress asking the president to respond to questions raised by the 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.

FROM: Greg Palast
TO: Rep. John Conyers

Chairman Conyers,

It's official: The Downing Street memos, a snooty New York Times "News Analysis" informs us, "are not the Dead Sea Scrolls." You are warned, Congressman, to ignore the clear evidence of official mendacity and bald-faced fibbing by our two nations' leaders because the cry for investigation came from the dark and dangerous world of "blogs" and "opponents" of Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush.

On May 5, "blog" site Buzzflash.com carried my story, IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED," bringing the London Times report of the Downing Street memo to US media which seemed to be suffering at the time from an attack of NADD -- "news attention deficit disorder."The memo, which contains the ill-making admission that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed" to match the Iraq-crazed fantasies of our President, is sufficient basis for a hearing toward impeachment of the Chief Executive. But to that we must add the other evidence and secret memos and documents still hidden from the American public.

By Ruby L. Bailey, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Wed Jun 15, 5:35 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The secret British memo of 2002 that reported that President Bush was determined to go to war against Iraq months earlier than he publicly acknowledged will get its first official hearing on Thursday - sort of.

In the closest version so far to a congressional hearing on the Downing Street memo, Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., will head a forum examining the document. That will be followed by an Internet-organized rally in front of the White House. Conyers plans to deliver the signatures of 105 congressional Democrats and more than 500,000 citizens on petitions demanding a detailed response from the Bush administration to the memo's allegations.

From Downing Street to Capitol Hill
Two leaked memos are raising further questions about whether the Bush administration "fixed" its intel to justify the Iraq war.

WEB EXCLUSIVE, By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek, Updated: 6:59 p.m. ET June 15, 2005

June 15 - Two senior British government officials today acknowledged as authentic a series of 2002 pre-Iraq war memos stating that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program was "effectively frozen" and that there was "no recent evidence" of Iraqi ties to international terrorism�private conclusions that contradicted two key pillars of the Bush administration's public case for the invasion in March 2003.

Soldier for the Truth
By Marc Cooper
L.A. Weekly
Friday 20 February 2004

Exposing Bush's talking-points war.

After two decades in the U.S. Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Karen
Kwiatkowski, now 43, knew her career as a regional analyst was coming to an
end when - in the months leading up to the war in Iraq - she felt she was
being "propagandized" by her own bosses.

With master's degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books
on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the spring

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 15 June 2005

Almost five hundred years ago, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, initiating a sequence of events which forever altered the geometry of global religion, politics and power. Luther's Theses began with the words, "Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg."

Another document is going to be nailed to another door on Thursday, June 16th. This door opens not to a church, but to the White House. This document is freighted with hard truths, stern demands and nearly a million names. This document, once nailed up, likewise carries with it all the possibilities of change.

Scholars missed the point of the essay I wrote with Ralph Nader about the case for impeachment.
Salon
By Kevin Zeese

June 15, 2005 | The fundamental question is whether Congress and the American people were misled into an unnecessary, illegal war that has turned into a quagmire. Are the indications of false statements and misrepresentations sufficient to justify a pursuit of the truth?

The evidence includes a series of exaggerated and false claims by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and officials in their administration over many months as the drumbeat for war grew louder. Statements were made in contradiction to the evidence included in intelligence documents from a wide range of U.S. and international agencies. As weapons inspectors were unable to find weapons of mass destruction, President Bush's rhetoric increased to the point of warning of a potential mushroom cloud over the United States generated by a nuclear attack by Saddam Hussein.

TODAY'S DEMOCRACY NOW!:

* The Downing Street Memo Comes To Washington, Conyers Blasts "Deafening Sound of Silence" *

We speak with Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) who is convening a public hearing tomorrow in Washington on the so-called Downing Street Memo and other newly released documents that he says show the Bush administration's "efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence." We also speak with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/15/1345223

The Baltimore Sun
June 15, 2005
By David Swanson and Jonathan Schwarz

SINCE ITS publication May 1 by The Sunday Times of London, the so-called Downing Street memo has dominated the media in Britain and on the Internet in the United States. The memo is the official minutes from a secret meeting about Iraq held by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his inner circle July 23, 2002.

The significance of the memo - and additional leaked British documents now surfacing in public view - can hardly be overstated. They conceivably could lead to impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

British officials believed the U.S. favored military force a year before the war, documents show.
By John Daniszewski, LA Times
June 15, 2005

LONDON -- In March 2002, the Bush administration had just begun to publicly raise the possibility of confronting Iraq. But behind the scenes, officials already were deeply engaged in seeking ways to justify an invasion, newly revealed British memos indicate.

Foreshadowing developments in the year before the war started, British officials emphasized the importance of U.N. diplomacy, which they said might force Saddam Hussein into a misstep. They also suggested that confronting the Iraqi leader be cast as an effort to prevent him from using weapons of mass destruction or giving them to terrorists.

Steve Berg, Star Tribune
June 15, 2005 BERG0615

As a former Washington reporter I've got a question that gnaws at me night and day, and, were I still occasionally hanging around the White House press room, I'd be eager to ask it. It's quite a simple question, really, but no one seems to be asking it and no one's quite sure what the answer might be. So, here goes:

Why are we in Iraq?

It kind of hangs in the air, doesn't it? But every time another American kid gets killed or another 20 Iraqis get shredded into bloody pieces, the question returns with a bit more urgency.

Fig leaf for war/Paper indicates U.N. was misled
June 15, 2005

Let's go back to 2002 and think about what the American people hoped for in Iraq. Such a review provides context to the latest British document leaked to the press and leads inevitably to the conclusion that both the British and American people were grossly misled.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were still fresh in American minds. The war in Afghanistan was underway. President Bush started early in the year talking about the need to eliminate Iraq's biological and chemical weapons, and end its efforts to rebuild its nuclear weapons program. The possible need for an invasion was openly discussed, and drew harsh opposition from Europe and the Arab world.

Kevin Zeese
Tuesday, 14 June 2005

Now Seven Leaked British Documents Raise Iraq War Questions

The Downing Street Memo - minutes of a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair and his advisors that said the U.S. was "fixing" the intelligence to support the Iraq War - was not enough to get the mainstream U.S. media or members of Congress to take the issue seriously. Now there is Downing II, III, IV, V, VI and VII!

As the evidence mounts ( http://democracyrising.us/content/view/245/164/ ), the failure of the media to seriously investigate the issues is baffling. Why aren't they interviewing current and former U.S. military intelligence officials about these reports from highest levels of British government? Isn't the media supposed to investigate and get the truth for their readers and viewers?

RawStory.com, Steve Bagley

Two confidants of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told RAW STORY Tuesday that he is privately seeking other senators to cosign a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Downing Street minutes.

�Kerry has been enlisting other senators to sign onto a letter to the intelligence committee seeking answers to the Downing Street memo,� said one, �so Americans can trust that security decisions are driven by facts and responsible intelligence, not by political calculation.�

This statement comes after nearly two weeks of silence from the senator, who previously promised to �raise the issue� of the Downing Street minutes in the Senate chamber.

From RawStory.com
By Larisa Alexandrovna

New documents from across the Atlantic paint a picture of a President bent on war and administration officials determined to deliver war in Iraq at any cost.

Against the backdrop of the Bush Administration�s public statements, the documents raise questions about whether the Blair and Bush administrations covered up earlier actions after the invasion.

The original Downing Street Memo, initially reported by Sunday Times Online , includes the transcribed official minutes of a 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, members of British intelligence, MI-6 and various Bush officials.

Officials deny intelligence that facts were fixed to invade Iraq
By Andrea Mitchell
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 6:34 p.m. ET June 13, 2005

WASHINGTON � It started during British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign last month, when details leaked about a top-secret memo, written in July 2002 � eight months before the Iraq war.

In the memo, British officials just back from Washington reported that prewar "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq.

Just last week, President Bush and Blair vigorously denied that war was inevitable.

THE SAD AND CONTINUING SAGA OF THE DOWNING STREET MEMO'S 'COVERAGE' IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

By David Michael Green


A June 8 (and things are now breaking so fast that specific dates really matter) interview
with the former Public Editor of the NY Times, Daniel Okrent, might give hope to those of
us who still believe in such bizarre and quaint concepts like government transparency,
public trust, news media fairness, and peace.

In an interview with PBS Newshour�s Terence Smith, Okrent is asked: �Do you have a

By Terry M. Neal
Washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 14, 2005; 10:26 AM

Democrats this week are escalating their efforts to highlight the so-called "Downing Street Memo."

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a public forum for Thursday on the subject. And 104 House Democrats have signed a letter written by Conyers to President Bush asking him for a detailed response to the memo.

After struggling during his failed presidential bid last year to stake out a clear and compelling position on the nation's most pressing issue -- Iraq -- Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has come out swinging. A senior aide close to Kerry said this week that a Kerry is circulating a letter about the memo among Democratic senators before sending it to Bush. The aide predicted that Kerry would make the letter public in the next few days.

Deep Throat of Downing Street
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 14, 2005; 10:18 AM

Deep Throat now has an English accent.

Reporter Michael Smith of The Sunday Times of London scored an international scoop this weekend with a story about a sensational Iraq war document provided by an anonymous high-level official source who, like W. Mark Felt of Watergate fame, seems to have taken up a mission of helping an investigative reporter probe allegations of misconduct and cover-up.

The document, a British government briefing paper from July 21, 2002, informed Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet ministers eight months before the invasion of Iraq that Blair had already committed Britain to supporting an American-led attack and that " they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal ."

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Interview With Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball Secretary Condoleezza Rice Washington, DC June 13, 2005

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, there's a lot of concern in this country, as you know, about the strength and the violence of the insurgency.

We just got these two memos in the last couple of weeks that � they're called the "Downing Street Memos" � one of them is a memo from now British Ambassador to the United States David Manning, in his capacity as advisor to British Prime Minister Blair, where he said that in March of 2002 he met with you and among the big questions that were still out there, in your mind, was having to do with what we're going to be like � what's it going to be like in Iraq the morning after. Do you recall those meetings?

The Downing Street Memos don't just prove that the Bush administration lied the war into existence. They prove that nobody planned for the aftermath.
By Matthew Yglesias, the American Prospect
Web Exclusive: 06.14.05

In the annals of stupid news events, the "controversy" sparked by Howard Dean's claim that the GOP is "pretty much a white, Christian party" ranks pretty high.

Not only did Dean fail to say anything objectionable, but also that remark isn't something anyone could seriously deny. Nor does it even count as a criticism of Republicans. It's an anodyne description of well-known facts about the American electorate.

Leaked memo hints at deceit
By Anthony Farmer
Poughkeepsie Journal

KINGSTON -- The Bush administration needs to answer lingering questions that it secretly decided to invade Iraq before seeking congressional authority and later distorted the justifications for going to war, U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, said Monday.

Hinchey, D-Hurley, is one of 90 congressmen who have signed a letter written by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., calling on President Bush to answer questions raised by the so-called "Downing Street Memo." The memo, leaked to the British press, purportedly offers proof the United States and Great Britain secretly agreed to invade Iraq in the summer of 2002, well before seeking a U.N. resolution to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Scott Maxwell, Orlando Sentinel
June 14, 2005

Corrine Brown and Tom Feeney pretty much represent the yin and yang of the hottest debate in Washington that is spilling into mainstream America.

Brown, the Democrat who represents Jacksonville and Orlando, is among the growing number of Congressfolk who want President Bush to address recently disclosed British documents that suggest the White House manipulated facts to justify a war in Iraq that it was not adequately prepared to handle.

On the other hand is Feeney, the Oviedo Republican who says that Democrats are using an inconclusive memo as simply another way to throw barbs at Bush.

WORLD VIEWS: New 'Downing Street Memo' says Bush, Blair agreed on 'regime change' in 2002; Iraq seen to 'slide into civil war'; and more.
- Edward M. Gomez, special to SF Gate, San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Is it a second Downing Street Memo -- or something even more damning for both the Bush administration and the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair?

On May 1, Britain's Sunday Times broke the story of the now-infamous Downing Street Memo; that document, the minutes of a meeting of Blair's top advisers, showed that the prime minister had known, some eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, that a war not authorized by the United Nations would be illegal for British troops to take part in. Now The Times has scooped its rivals again with the news -- and the text of -- a leaked, extremely secret British Cabinet Office briefing paper dated July 23, 2002.

By the Capital Times
An editorial
June 13, 2005

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., did not buy the spin that said the U.S. needed to invade and occupy Iraq. And he is not buying the spin that says all is now well in that Middle Eastern country.

"The mantra for Fox News is that we only hear the bad news (about Iraq). I was over there (in February), and we don't hear enough bad news," the senator told a listening session in Clinton this week.

The war, says Feingold, has turned into an "amazing mess."

The senator, who voted against authorizing the Bush administration to launch the military adventure that has cost almost 1,700 American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, is blunt about the need to establish a timetable for getting U.S. troops out of the quagmire.