How Do You Ask a Person to be the Last One to Die for Pack of Lies?

When you ask yourself why and how the corporate media is able to spike the Downing Street Memo story, think about what Dan Froomkin, who isn't a hack, had to say on the subject almost two weeks ago:

Dan Froomkin: Well, in some ways it's old news, isn't it?  A lot of people have said Bush and Cheney were intent on attacking Iraq from Day One. The question is whether they cooked the intelligence -- and of course the White House's own commission recently said they did not, and no one, apparently, has proven that they did.

That said, there are a lot of people e-mailing me about this, so I'm putting it out there.

Greg Palast disagrees:

The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "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."

Read that again:  "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."

For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on.  Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."

And if this ain't it, nothing is.

[...]

A month ago, the Silberman-Robb Commission issued its report on WMD intelligence before the war, dismissing claims that Bush fixed the facts with this snooty, condescending conclusion written directly to the President, "After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons."

We now know the report was a bogus 618 pages of thick whitewash aimed to let Bush off the hook for his murderous mendacity.

I'm not going to pretend that I know if the memo is a smoking gun or not.  But it is information that  comes from outside of the country and its distance from Rove's machinations helps it to pass one smell test.  It is certainly not "old news."   The S-R commission report's standing as the definitive word as to the extent and intent of BushCo lies has been cast into doubt.  I'm not sure why Froomkin is suggesting that doesn't matter. (check the Update below)

Kathy at Citizen's Rent has a response to the absence of US coverage of the Downing Street Memo and is participating in a googlebomb project that is attempting to put some US sites at the top of the Google search for "Downing Street Memo."   There's a real danger that the story will disappear under the cover that it is a UK story, not an American one.   

Kathy said to steal the post, so I did:

If you're feeling out of the loop because coverage has been so thin, I offer you these sources of information, compliments of the never-sleeping blogosphere. Links all go to the referred source, but "Downing Street Memo" or "Rycroft Memo" is linked to support this googlebomb effort.

• Downing Street Memo offers the text of the memo and an analysis of the contents - a good place to start.
• The Blues Bus offers the latest comments by Rep. John Conyers on the Downing Street Memo.
• Tom's Place offers the text of the Downing Street Memo with a bit of pissed off commentary.
• Joe Conason of Slate gives us take on why the US media isn't paying attention to the Downing Street Memo.
• Greg Palast rants about the lack of coverage by the US media of the Downing Street Memo, seeing the contents as justification for the impeachment of Bush. 
• A taste of the minimal coverage by the MSM can be found in this pro-war WaPO story on the Downing Street Memo.
• undefined.com offers the text of a letter from 88 members of Congress asking Bush to explain himself in regard to the Downing Street Memo. The same letter regarding the Downing Street Memo is available in PDF format on the .gov site.
• Here, TomPaine.com offers the Downing Street Memo commentary by Ray McGovern, who served for 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
• More from TomPaine.com with this analysis of the Downing Street Memo by John Prados, a senior fellow with the National Security Archive.

The same content can be found after the jump in the links to the Rycrosft memo. I've duplicated the links above in support of Scoobie's googlebomb project- an effort to ensure that those searching for information on the memo see more than UK news sites when they search. If you want to participate, copy this post for your own blog or head over to this post on DailyKos and click away.

UPDATE: I should have read Froomkin today before posting this:

The liberal blogosphere has been insisting that the memo comprises a "smoking gun" -- which, of course, it doesn't. It's basically hearsay, albeit high-level hearsay.

But while that's not enough to convict, it's certainly enough to cause the press to revisit the issue.

I'm pretty sure the memo isn't hearsay, since I think the author of the memo was present at the meeting, but I'm not sure of that.  But Froomkin does go on to show which sources are keeping the story active.  Looks like the memo may not be old news after all.

UPDATE: Paperwight is on board the Downing Street Minute train and he says the minutes aren't hearsay too.  I went with other reasons than his, (I did pick this one though: (E) a statement by a coconspirator of a party during the course and in furtherance of the conspiracy.) but he's the law-talkin' guy.  I just watch a lot of Law and Order.  They're always getting exceptions to hearsay over there.

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Comments

[Rob]

Thanks for the tip. Count me in. BTW, Media Matters had a list for the week ending May 13 for the major news organizations that had covered the story--at least in passing. They left out Knight Ridder, who was first, but it's an interesting list that includes CNN.com, CNN's lame Inside the Blogs and the upcoming NY Times Book Review story on it (I think). On that note, if you feel like asking a non-Washington reporter his opinions on the Newsweek fiasco and the DS memo, come on by.

[Thomas Nephew]

I guess I've been agreeing with Froomkin ("high level hearsay"). Rycroft writes that "C" reports from talks in Washington that intelligence is being fixed, and that a "Running Start" plan would be initiated by a (presumably manufactured) Iraqi casus belli. We readers are taking Rycroft's word, who is taking C's word, who is taking his Washington buddies' word. Particularly the "fixed intelligence" is also arguably just a judgment call about the politics of it all, and not necessarily an "I was there as we twisted facts."

I think it's not so much a smoking gun as a detailed map where to find some ammunition. Pry loose that "Running Start" plan and/or "How to make Iraq start the war", for example, and the rest of "C"s story looks stronger. (And/or get "C" to talk, fat chance.)

[Rob]

You have a point. I only wish Bush had set the noose for Saddam to hang himself. That would've made sense from a strategic standpoint, if nothing else. But instead he started off by braying about "regime change" (i.e. "overthrow") and then shifted from argument to argument until one stuck. It's not that the Bush administration "fixed" intelligence; we've had reports aplenty for 2.5 years that they did. While that's bad, what's damning from the memo is that they were set for war a year before they publicly "decided" to go to war, all the while telling everyone that war was the last resort and they were trying really, really hard to avert invasion. The even sadder part is that only those who weren't paying attention could've believed that.

[KathyF]

I admit I haven't been paying as much attention to this as I should have, what with life interfering with blogging lately. But some of the Brit blogs on my blogroll have been on it from day one, although it got a mite overshadowed by the election here. It helped to reduce Blair's lead, imo.

[Thomas Nephew]

I think there's an explanation for why Brits and Americans react differently to the memo: one can hold the memo against the Blair administration even if one is agnostic about the actual accuracy of "C"s claims.

The point is, "C" (allegedly) said what he said, and the Blair folks nevertheless went ahead with war plans despite what the memo depicts as a credible "intelligence fixed" and "Iraqi casus belli" claim by one of their own. Although it occurs to me also to wonder how heavily Rycroft (and/or "C") paraphrased what they heard at the respective meetings.

I'll contradict myself a bit and say that since "probity of the Blair admin." is at issue, one of the most significant things they did, IMO, was to back up the African uranium procurement claim that Bush mentioned in the 2003 SOU. If they weren't letting "fixed intelligence" bother them in August 2002, that puts a different light on them sticking with the Africa uranium story later on.

[eRobin]

Hi :)

Thomas - I had forgotten about the uranium story. That's a good question.

[eRobin]

E&P says that C is Dearlove, head of MI6, "who had just returned from consultations in Washington along with other senior British officials."