Downing Street Memo

[Jake]

This thread is the reason I'm happy you're back fb

[??????????]

idiot freedomburns

Goddamn, I love pissing off retarded Republicans by skewering them with the truth.  I forgot how much fun this forum can be!

[freedomburns]

idiot freedomburns

Goddamn, I love pissing off retarded Republicans by skewering them with the truth.  I forgot how much fun this forum can be!

LOL, now that is funny.

Some truth with that one, but what does that make you then Mr. Eleven Thousand posts?  The biggest retard of us all I suppose.  My mom taught me not to make fun of the mentally handicapped, so I suppose I should leave SR alone.  :/

[??????????]

idiot freedomburns

Goddamn, I love pissing off retarded Republicans by skewering them with the truth.  I forgot how much fun this forum can be!

LOL, now that is funny.

Some truth with that one, but what does that make you then Mr. Eleven Thousand posts?  The biggest retard of us all I suppose.  My mom taught me not to make fun of the mentally handicapped, so I suppose I should leave SR alone.  :/

OMFG>>>> BURN!!11!!!!1!

[J. J.]

1. There's no question to authenticity. Blair has not denied it.
2. How is this relevant to anything?

Since the memo shows that Blair, et al., thought that there were WMD's in Iraq, it is huge support for the reasons to go to war.  It's evidence to motivation, i.e. Iraq had WMD's.

Now, even though it supports the reasoning behind going to war, it might not be accurate.

I actually hope it is accurate, but I'm willing to withold judgment on that point.

[J. J.]

"The U.S. has lost confidence in containment," the document said. "Some in government want Saddam removed. The success of Operation Enduring Freedom , distrust of U.N. sanctions and inspection regimes, and unfinished business from 1991 are all factors.

"Washington believes the legal basis for an attack already exists. Nor will it necessarily be governed by wider political factors. The U.S. may be willing to work with a smaller coalition than we think desirable," it said.The paper said the British view was that any invasion for the purpose of regime change "has no basis under international law." The best way to justify military action, it said, would be to convince the Security Council that Iraq was in breach of its post-Gulf War obligations to eliminate its store of weapons of mass destruction. The document appeared to rule out any action in Iraq short of an invasion.

Failed to state "Intelligence was fixed behind policy."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-britmemos15jun15,0,3650829.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines

I'm stunned to think that the US government would want to invade another counttry because it violated previous obligations, and would find, in 2002, that sactions were not working!  WOW!

(Ah, that is sarcasm.)

[freedomburns]

idiot freedomburns

Goddamn, I love pissing off retarded Republicans by skewering them with the truth.  I forgot how much fun this forum can be!

LOL, now that is funny.

Some truth with that one, but what does that make you then Mr. Eleven Thousand posts?  The biggest retard of us all I suppose.  My mom taught me not to make fun of the mentally handicapped, so I suppose I should leave SR alone.  :/

OMFG>>>> BURN!!11!!!!1!

ouch!

Well, mom always told me I was "special".  Now I know what she meant.

[freedomburns]

burn one?  I am always up for that!

[freedomburns]

Sunday Times today

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/06/14/DI2005061401261.html?referrer=email

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.

Read more: Ministers Were Told of Need for Gulf War 'Excuse.' , ( Sunday Times of London, June 12, 2005. )

Blair Hit by New Leak of Secret War Plan. , ( Sunday Times of London, May 1, 2005. )

The Downing Street Memo. ,( Sunday Times of London, May 1, 2005. )

A transcript follows.


Carlisle, Pa.: In your research, did you or any reporter you know come across War College or other military-academic research that indicated that Saddam Hussein likely no longer had weapons of mass destruction and that a foreign invasion of a country such as Iraq with a strong anti-American sentiment would be a costly venture? It seems the military academicians and intelligence reports had the facts right, but this information never filtered upwards to the White House or, if it did, it was ignorned, nor did the press ever consider any of it useful except for perhaps a one day news spin and then was quickly forgotten.

Michael Smith: I think it is clear from the documents themselves that the whole venture was widely viewed as being highly dubious with no certainty of what would come out of it. The administration ensured that it only got the answers it wanted. But they either ignored the advice they were getting on the likely cost or managed to filter it out with this highly pressurised regime of come up with the right answers, or we will be on your back to do so all the time. That is what resulted in the National Intelligence Estimated of October 2002 which was designed by George Tenet to get a questioning Congress off the President's back. Everyone has heard about the British "dodgy" dossiers but the actual intelligence analysis, the so-called JIC report, on which the main dossier was based spoke mostly of weapons programmes, ie production of the agent that would be put into weapons, rather than actual stockpiled weapons.The closest it came to saying there were actually any weapons was to say there "may be" 1.5tons of VX gas, a conclusion that went back to the conclusions of the UNSCOM weapons inspectors in 1998. The CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on the other hand, said there were probably up to 500 tons of chemical weapons in Iraq. That gives you a feel of the kind of distortion that was going on. But as for the idea that he had very active programmes going on, well everyone, including the French and the Russians, thought that. There was a kind of group think that no-one was challenging. Long answer but I hope it's helpful.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: To what do you attribute the seeming lack of interest by the American public and main stream media, at least initially, in the revelations contained in the Downing Street Memo?

Michael Smith: Firstly, I think the leaks were regarded as politically motivated. Secondly there was a feeling of well we said that way back when. Then of course as the pressure mounted from the outside, there was a defensive attitude. "We have said this before, if you the reader didn't listen well what can we do", seemed to be the attitude. I dont know if you have this expression over there, but we say someone "wants to have their cake and eat it". That's what that response reeks of. Either it was politically motivated and therefore not true or it was published before by the US newspapers and was true, it cant be both can it?

...

[riceowl]

Hmm...

I see....

So what you're saying is...if I have questions about Live Online, I can find out in a new interactive FAQ?

Nifty!

[J. J.]

Sunday Times today

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/06/14/DI2005061401261.html?referrer=email

The Downing Street Memo

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

The closest it came to saying there were actually any weapons was to say there "may be" 1.5tons of VX gas, a conclusion that went back to the conclusions of the UNSCOM weapons inspectors in 1998. The CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on the other hand, said there were probably up to 500 tons of chemical weapons in Iraq. That gives you a feel of the kind of distortion that was going on. But as for the idea that he had very active programmes going on, well everyone, including the French and the Russians, thought that. There was a kind of group think that no-one was challenging. Long answer but I hope it's helpful.

_______________________

If this is correct, it shows that all parties thought Iraq had WMD's.  I'm seeing this is as proof of anything but faulty intelligence.  I've been saying that since the summer of 2003.

[Shira]

I'm not blaming anyone in office for an intelligence failure.  You've just demonstated that there was bad information that was circulating during the Clinton period.

"intelligence failure"
What a joke!
It is very sad if you really believe in this crap.

[Shira]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/politics/17downing.ready.html?ex=1119240000&en=88ca73542a7eee80&ei=5070


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.

"Thanks to the Downing Street minutes, we now know the truth," said Ray McGovern, a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years who helped organize a group of other retired intelligence officers to oppose the war.

The memo said Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, had said in the meeting that Mr. Bush had already decided on war, "but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a 24-year-old soldier killed in Iraq last year, said the memo "confirms what I already suspected: the leadership of this country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on prefabricated and cherry-picked intelligence."

The White House has maintained that Mr. Bush decided to invade Iraq only after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made the administration's case in a lengthy presentation to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. His argument focused on intelligence demonstrating that Iraq had illicit weapons. No weapons, however, have been found.

Asked about the memo last week, President Bush said: "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option." He added, "We worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully."

After the hearing, Mr. Conyers and a dozen Congressional colleagues delivered to the White House bundles that they said contained the names of more than 560,000 Americans gathered on the Internet who had endorsed his letter to the president demanding answers to questions raised by the British memo. Some 122 members of Congress also signed the letter.

Asked about Mr. Conyers's letter and the British memo, Scott McClellan, the president's chief spokesman, described the congressman as "an individual who voted against the war in the first place and is simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed."

"And our focus is not on the past," Mr. McClellan said. "It's on the future and working to make sure we succeed in Iraq."

The hearing and other events Thursday reflected antiwar sentiment re-energized both by publication of the British memo and by evidence that Congressional and public opinion has shifted significantly against the president's conduct of the war.

A bipartisan group of House members introduced a resolution calling on the administration to announce by the end of the year a plan for the withdrawal of American forces, and more than 40 legislators announced the formation of an "Out of Iraq" Congressional caucus led by Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat.

Also, a New York Times/CBS News poll being published Friday found that 37 percent of Americans questioned approve of how Mr. Bush is dealing with Iraq, down from 45 percent in February.

At an antiwar rally across the street from the White House after Mr. Conyers's hearing, speakers roused a crowd of several hundred people with calls to bring the troops home and to impeach Mr. Bush. The protesters, organized by a group called After Downing Street, called the British memo the "smoking gun" proving their case against the administration.

The Downing Street memo, so named because the meeting was at the prime minister's London residence, was published in The Sunday Times of London on May 1.

It is one of seven prewar documents leaked since September to Michael Smith, a reporter for The Daily Telegraph before he began working for The Sunday Times. One, written in preparation for the July 23 meeting and published Sunday by The Sunday Times, warned that "a postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise" in which "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

Activists have accused mainstream news organizations of playing down the document's significance, even as antiwar bloggers have seized upon it as evidence.

David Swanson, a Democratic activist and one of the founders of After Downing Street, criticized those defenders of President Bush and journalists who have called the memo "old news" because the president's war preparations were widely reported by mid-2002.

"It's not old news to most Americans," Mr. Swanson said.

[Palefire]

It certainly true that the DSM isn't old news to most Americans. I would also note that if we fail to understand the mistakes and the misjudgments and the misuses of PR during the build up to the Iraq war, we will not be in position to do better the next time. That's not what I would call dwelling on the past, I would call it learning. Learning is a good thing. I have noted that avoiding accountability seems to be much more popular in Washington these days than learning, but that doesn’t change the importance of learning.

[Shira]

It certainly true that the DSM isn't old news to most Americans. I would also note that if we fail to understand the mistakes and the misjudgments and the misuses of PR during the build up to the Iraq war, we will not be in position to do better the next time. That's not what I would call dwelling on the past, I would call it learning. Learning is a good thing. I have noted that avoiding accountability seems to be much more popular in Washington these days than learning, but that doesn’t change the importance of learning.

Cheney badly wanted this war long before 9/11

[??????????]

It certainly true that the DSM isn't old news to most Americans. I would also note that if we fail to understand the mistakes and the misjudgments and the misuses of PR during the build up to the Iraq war, we will not be in position to do better the next time. That's not what I would call dwelling on the past, I would call it learning. Learning is a good thing. I have noted that avoiding accountability seems to be much more popular in Washington these days than learning, but that doesn’t change the importance of learning.

Cheney badly wanted this war long before 9/11

[Shira]

Well, woulndn't there be a little problem since Kerry sent a letter to Clinton about Iraq's WMD's?  Should we impeach most of Congress?  If there is no Congress, how could a president be impeached? :-)

 

That just proves that Kerry is no peacnik. That letter was from 1998 or so, and was based upon bad information that was found to be bad before we invaded Iraq. It's irrevelant to the Downing Street memo, which indicated that Bush started planning to invade Iraq shortly after 9/11, and didn't care about evidence or diplomaacy, he was going to invade no matter what.

Enough of blaming the Democrats for Bush's mistake. That's g pathetic.

I'm not blaming anyone in office for an intelligence failure.  You've just demonstated that there was bad information that was circulating during the Clinton period.

Enough with this intelligence failure spin. They badly wanted to control Iraq long before 9/11. They needed a smart way to sell it to the naive American people.

[A18]

Putting our troops in harm's way is the hardest decision any President faces. I believe our action in Iraq clearly is in America's interest. Never again can we allow Saddam Hussein to develop nuclear weapons, poison gas, biological weapons, or missiles to deliver them. He has used such terrible weapons before against soldiers, against his neighbors, against civilians. And if left unchecked, he'll use them again.

-- Bill Clinton, December 19, 1998 Radio Address
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showdoc.php?id=514&type=3&president=42

[Mort from NewYawk]

Enough with this intelligence failure spin. They badly wanted to control Iraq long before 9/11. They needed a smart way to sell it to the naive American people.

Shira, I agree with you on the above, though not on much else about Bush or Iraq.

During the runup to the war, I didn’t believe that Hussein had workable systems to deploy WMDs, except, perhaps, by individuals carrying “dirty bombs” or releasing chemical weapons. I saw the WMD pitch as hyped up, the Powell performance at the UN as a loyal soldier carrying out an order he intensely disliked and didn’t believe in. I thought at the time that the Iraq invasion had been an early goal of the Cheney-Wolfowitz-Perle-Rumsfeld camp that after 9/11 was seized upon and elevated to a first response status, particularly after our overcautious “pursuit” of Bin Laden stalled for fear of crossing the Pakistani border.

Nevertheless, I didn’t oppose the invasion, and support the war now, for the same reasons that I imagine the neoconservatives in Bush’s cabinet were pushing it all along:

•   Ease the world oil crisis by pumping up Iraqi production to 4-5 billion gallons/day. Win the confidence of the Iraqi nation by building up an impoverished economy and infrastructure supported by increased oil production. Establish a representative government friendly to the U.S.
•   Get rid of a brutal bully who had the will, if not the means, to attack Israel and the West, and who would gladly harbor and deal with terrorists if it worked to further his megalomaniacal plans.
•   Establish a forward camp of American military strength in the heart of the Middle East, creating leverage that will influence the internal politics of neighboring countries.

In many ways, Iraq was the perfect place to start the neocons more aggressive approach to foreign policy – a country with major oil deposits, with a more secular population that has more of a gut distrust of fundamentalist fanaticism than most of it’s neighbors, and a people so abused and terrorized by their own government for 25 years that they would likely demonstrate an intense thirst for personal and political freedoms.

Did it all work out as planned? Of course not.

Will it work out as planned over a number of years? Absolutely. Only those whose politics are dominated by a livid gut hatred of Bush can deny that the people of Iraq are on a course towards democracy that stands an excellent chance of surviving ethnic rivalries and fringe religious fanaticism.

The political subterfuge tied to the WMD hype was Bush’s biggest campaign weakness among moderates critical to his re-election. If the Downing Street memo had come out during the campaign, it might have been the story that cost Bush and the neocons their jobs. At this point, the impression that it conveys about pre-war planning will have a tough time making headway against the increasing number of headlines conveying success in Iraq.

[Beet]

This memo is no surprise.

Once a democratic peoples show indifference to truth, they close the last and ultimate incentive of their government for responsible behavior.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Seeing as most voters have never really cared about the truth in an objective sense that means that governments have never really done responsible behavior

One of the best bits of every new year over here is when all the old papers released under the 30 year rule are published, btw.

[Beet]

Seeing as most voters have never really cared about the truth in an objective sense that means that governments have never really done responsible behavior

People have become increasingly inured at government abuses; consequently the absuses have become larger and more daring. It's a worrying trend in democracy.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

People have become increasingly inured at government abuses; consequently the absuses have become larger and more daring. It's a worrying trend in democracy.

I think that public or semi-public abuses have got worse but (speaking from a British perspective) overall things don't seem to have got a whole lot worse; after all the worst post-war government abuse over here happend 20 years ago and the sort of dodgy stuff the government got up to in the General Strike back in the '20's is unimaginable nowadays.

[Beet]

People have become increasingly inured at government abuses; consequently the absuses have become larger and more daring. It's a worrying trend in democracy.

I think that public or semi-public abuses have got worse but (speaking from a British perspective) overall things don't seem to have got a whole lot worse; after all the worst post-war government abuse over here happend 20 years ago and the sort of dodgy stuff the government got up to in the General Strike back in the '20's is unimaginable nowadays.

I guess I'm writing mostly from an American perspective. Sure, terrible abuses happened back in the day, but when obvious and substantial enough they used to generate quite a storm. No longer, it seems. Everything has been submerged under partisanship, and even large government abuses don't change many minds.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Although what you've said is exactly what's happend to local government over here. Heard about the power struggle in Liverpool?