Video: Michael Smith verifies the Downing Street Memo

[tuvor]

Hardball via C&L:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/06/20.html#a3547

[kansasblue]

1. Tell him to go see Rush Limboob

[napi21]

2. I watched Hardball and saw him. A very believable guy!

I was impressed when he said the more important part of this story wasn't the DSM, but some other document (I forget the name of it).

He's a very believable guy and I think he mae a great contribution to our side tonight.

[END_HATRED_NOW]

3. More damning

More Damning than Downing Street

by Paul Rogat Loeb

06/15/05 "Common Dreams" - ...

snip>

I don't think most Americans know these prewar attacks ever happened, aside from those who've read Scahill's recent piece, or heard him on Democracy Now. I recall no mainline media coverage at the time, and little in the alternative press. The bombings that destroyed Iraq's air defenses were under the radar for both the American media and public.

If coverage of the Downing Street memo continues to increase, I suspect the administration will try to dismiss it as mere diplomatic talk, just inside baseball. But they weren't just manipulating intelligence so they could attack no matter how Saddam Hussein responded. They weren't only bribing would-be allies into participation. They were fighting a war they'd planned long before. They just didn't bother to tell the American public.

source:
http://www.informationcl earinghouse.info/article9156.htm

details of pre-war strikes on url...

http://www.ccmep.org/usbombingwatch/2002.html

[jojo54]

4. It was the briefing

I'm trying to find the link for it, but haven't seen it yet.

[Spazito]

5. Rawstory has all the documents, it is laid out very well...

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/larisa/downing_street_documents_613

I think it might be the Iraq options briefing document that he was referring to.

[END_HATRED_NOW]

6. what bothers me

I distintly remember reading that the reporter who first covered the story had destroyed the "original " Downing Street Memos...fact or fiction?

[Spazito]

7. Fiction

The documents are transcribed photocopies in PDF format and were acquired from a British source and corroborated by Michael Smith, the journalist who first received the original leaked memos. This site validated them through an independent source and with Smith.

“I was given them last September while still on the Telegraph,” Smith, who now works for the London Sunday Times, told RAW STORY. “I was given very strict orders from the lawyers as to how to handle them.”

“I first photocopied them to ensure they were on our paper and returned the originals, which were on government paper and therefore government property, to the source,” he added.

Link:

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Backstory_Confirming_the_Downing_Street_0614.html

Also, watch the video clip in the OP and you will hear the journalist explain exactly what the process was.

[Straight Shooter]

8. Also see this great post by LynnTheDem

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3903645

[END_HATRED_NOW]

9. Could this happen?

yeah, so if they are photocopies, I fear they might not hold up.:cry: That's going to be the first thing the Reps go for, the credibility of the documents.

[chalky]

10. And yet, in all this time, no one in this madministration (or Blair's

for that matter) has dropped the "F" bomb. The documents have been out there for over a month and not one official has used the words "forgery" or "fake".

Blair, while trying to prove how unimportant the minutes are, slipped up and basically admitted that they were real by saying, "...And let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations." He could have said, "That memo is a pack of lies," or words to that effect, but he didn't. There wasn't even an "alleged" thrown in for good measure.

Even Mehlman, who lied like a cheap toupee that the documents had been "discredited" was very careful not to call them "forgeries".

Gotta wonder about that.