Downing Street Memo now up on DNC blog

[bklyncowgirl]

I guess they're getting serious about this.

The Downing Street memo
It has been a huge scandal in Britain, but made almost no waves here in the United States as the media has studiously ignored it.

It's the Downing Street Memo, top-secret minutes from a meeting of high-ranking British officials that took place in July 2002. The memo is a smoking gun proving once and for all that the Bush administration lied in the run up to the Iraq war, exaggerating the threat from Saddam Hussein and manipulating intelligence (saying "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy").

The memo makes it crystal clear that the administration was planning to attack Iraq even as President Bush claimed to be seeking a diplomatic solution. It also discusses how the administration arranged the timing around the 2002 Congressional elections.


http://www.democrats.org/blog/comment/00012146.html

[Rainscents]

1. About F#@King time!!!

[ClassWarrior]

31. I guess WE finally yelled loud enough. LOL

Hey, let's keep YELLING!!

NGU.

[janx]

2. I was just about to post this!

They have some great links.

[radfringe]

15. I was going to wait till tomorrow to put up this toon....

but it seemed more appropriate for a "sneak peek" today

[janx]

21. Aiyeeyee!

It's coming out!

[paineinthearse]

3. It's been up in DU since this morning

Read the minutes at

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x129550

&

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1826004

Are there any earlier postings?

[babylonsister]

4. Woo hoo-nominated! It just keeps getting better and better! nt

[meppie-meppie not]

5. ya and then maybe they'll post the facts that bombing started a

month before congressional approval was given!

[sarahlee]

6. Someone needs to tell them that it is a MINUTE

not a memo! There is a legal distinction between the two. How can we get the press to report it correctly when we don't ourselves?

[AuntiBush]

37. Screaming at them might help... mention they could loose their ratings$$

Just a thought since we can't get their damn attention any other way.

:banghead:

[janx]

7. This probably means the Dems are going to go after it.

They were probably waiting to see what would happen, vetting information and sources, and deciding what to do with it.

This is a go.

[BigBearJohn]

8. I wrote to them 10 times asking why they haven't covered Downing Minutes

[Turn CO Blue]

9. Hey BBJ, if this breaks, you're one of the main reasons!

I appreciate the energy you've put into all your posts about the DSM and Conyer's petition drive. THANK YOU!

[BigBearJohn]

16. Thanks! It's great that people are paying attention.

[Turn CO Blue]

23. Oh, they've got my attention. You've got my attention.

It's hard to pay attention to anything else these days, ( you know, like work, cooking, cleaning, reading anything but DU, etc.)

[BigBearJohn]

29. What could possibly be more important than getting rid of shrub

I keep thinking, you get rid of the root, you get rid of all the weeds.

[AuntiBush]

38. Several FReeper Friends Seen your postings, BigBearJohn!

You've commanded our attention - now how about those so-called tube-reporters!?!

[Booster]

30. I agree, BBJ - you've been all over this for a long time now and

we all appreciate your posts on the subject. Keep up the good work.

[janx]

34. Good for you!

My thoughts are that they probably checked, double-checked, and triple-checked sources and information before they took it on. And then they probably discussed things with people in Congress and elsewhere. In the long run, that will matter.

:toast:

[AuntiBush]

39. Glad you mentioned that thought.

It has baffled me as to "why now!?!"
Why was it sat on for so long...

Deep Throat
Now this...

Today in the Baltimore Sun Newpaper (no link, sorry) paraphrasing;

"Russian leader tosses major threat at US saying if * sends Star Wars upwards, they'll not wait a second to attack us..."

A major threat on the back page!

[PuraVidaDreamin]

10. They finally lit the fuse!

Didn't Jimmy Carter say last year at the DNC something like
"democracy is in the fight for it's very soul". Another true American hero.

[Dr Fate]

11. Swing voters dont go to the DNC website. Dean needs to be "on the TV"

NOW.

[Cha]

26. It's start! At least it's

up on the website..and spreading from there and Kerry's going to talk about it Monday.

I'm glad you've been so vocal about this..it's helping a lot! Look how far it's come from over the Ocean.

[damntexdem]

12. Wow, it's now so well-known that ...

even the DNC knows about it?

[Supersedeas]

13. about time

[Fire Walk With Me]

14. No link on their page to Democratic Underground?

[BigBearJohn]

17. Yeah, I noticed that too. and I don't like it!!!

[janx]

18. Write 'em and tell 'em! n/t

[UrbScotty]

25. I know I will (nt)

[janx]

19. kick

[mzmolly]

20. PLEASE GET INVOLVED IN THE EASY ACTIVISM LOCATED AT THE DNC WEBSITE!

It's time to step up and make our voices heard. Here are a few things you can do to take action:

First, get the facts. Visit Downing Street Memo.com to learn everything there is to know about the memo. You can read the memo itself and learn how Bush's rhetoric directly contradicted the facts in the memo.

Alert the media. Has your local media covered the story? Write a letter to local media outlets asking why they don't think a memo proving the Bush administration lied to push us into war isn't important.

Contact your elected officials. Have your Representative and Senators spoken out about this memo? Call them today and ask them.

Click the link in the OP or here:

http://www.democrats.org/blog/comment/00012146.html

The DNC site makes this so easy, I contacted my two senators and 5 local media outlets in less than 5 minutes. SEE THE LINK FOR EASY/EFFECTIVE ACTIVISM.

[LittleClarkie]

22. kick

:kick:

[tavalon]

24. Now, the DLC can put it up on their website!

Hello? Helllllooooooo..................................

[Turn CO Blue]

32. Yeah, right! /sarcasm You know them too well. n/t

[HR_Pufnstuf]

27. I would like to take this time to thank...

...Matt Drudge for taking the impeachment movement message to the mainstream media on "Hannity and Colmes" tonite!


anyone see drudgester tonite?

Ahhh lol. lmao!

[Gloria]

28. Let's see if they do an email thingy out to everyone on their

list...now THAT would be very impressive.

[proud patriot]

33. I put a sign in my front yard today

"read the Downing Street Memo just Google it"

[Pryderi]

35. I finally found a LTTE about DSM in Cincinnati!!!

IT'S ABOUT TIME!


The view of America from afar

Happy Memorial Day.

On our visits to Ireland and Italy, with a brief stop in England, Nina and I had no desire of engaging in any political discussions. This was to be a holiday.

We should have known better. There is no way to avoid politics if the visitor is seen as a representative of the most powerful nation in the world, the one that sets the agenda for everyone else, whether they like it or not.

Of course, it is all about Iraq. Nothing else matters these days in any discussion of America. In pubs, restaurants, hotels, on the street, in gas stations, in airports, in private homes, the subject almost always came up.

It is impossible to exaggerate the wide, and widening, gulf between the American attitude on the Iraq war and the view from our friends across the Atlantic. This is the people talking, not the governments.

According to polls, we in this country are about evenly divided on whether we were right or wrong to go to war in Iraq. Not so in Europe. The polls show an enormous majority, sometimes 85 to 15 percent, of people who believe it was a mistake. The numbers have remained constant for two years and more.

It is fair to say that our personal experience over a two-week period mirrored those numbers, but this must be added: Very seldom was bitterness expressed toward the American people. Only toward the governmental policies.

It was not anger, it was bewilderment. What were we doing? What was the strategic mission? If it was oil, why did we have to get so many Americans and others killed? We could have squeezed Iraq for all its oil without firing a shot. Was it religion? If so, surely history had taught us all that the mix of religion and policy was no-win. Ireland knew it better than most.

The gulf between the priorities here and there was also obvious in the news coverage.

While we were there, major news headlines were made and led TV news stories prepared on the "Downing Street Memo." That was the document in which British intelligence asserted in the summer of 2002 that they went to Washington to discuss the evidence of Iraq's complicity in terrorism. They soon discovered that evidence was not required. "The intelligence and the facts," said the memo, "were being fixed around the policy," which was to invade Iraq, even though there was almost no evidence of terrorism and evidence of weapons of mass destruction "was thin."

America was going to war in Iraq and that was that. Great Britain could go along or be left behind. Again, that British memo was written in the summer of 2002. This news in Europe was considered the "smoking gun" that Tony Blair had, indeed, "cooked the books" in making his case for war. And so had the U.S. government.

The other huge story was the visit by maverick British Member of Parliament George Galloway to a U.S. Senate committee hearing in which he aggressively and effectively scorched the halls of Congress with red-hot rhetoric on Iraq. Galloway had been accused by the committee of getting warrants for oil to sell from Iraq as part of the notorious "Oil for Food" program managed - poorly - by the U.N.

He presented a convincing case that he never made a "thin dime" from any such program, that he had documentation, that he had won a libel suit on the issues and was prepared to do it again.

But what caused the uproar in Europe - British, Spanish, French, Italian, Irish and German TV led with it - was his sharp and eloquent attack on America's role in the war, from the run-up to the present day. He said, and had specific contemporary quotes, that he had been right and we had been wrong at every step.

Even those in Europe who disagree with Mr. Galloway's fiery politics - and there are many - found his confrontation with our august Senate refreshing.

When Nina and I got back, I found that our newspapers had pretty much buried both stories, which were so important to 350,000,000 of our natural allies.

All that said, I was most disturbed by what a middle-aged man in an Irish pub said to me. "Why aren't you making things anymore? Americans used to make all the things we wanted. Now you don't make anything I want or need." That was the most troubling indictment of America I heard on our trip.

America, the temple of invention and industry, doesn't make things anymore.

Write to Nick Clooney c/o The Post, 125 E. Court St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050530/LIFE03/505300301/1008/LIFE

[AuntiBush]

36. More Links from same site: Wow

snip

The Christian Science Monitor had a good story on the media ignoring the memo. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0517/dailyUpdate.html

Ray McGovern of Intelligence Professionals for Sanity talks about how Bush fixed the facts. http://www.tompaine.com/articles/proof_bush_fixed_the_facts.php

The always a must-read Paul Krugman took the memo on. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_051605D.shtml

end snip

Does anyone else get the feeling our Rep's can't do this without major public outcry?