David Corn (TomPaine): Proof Of Deception, Not Intention

[Jack Rabbit]

From TomPaine.com
Dated Tuesday June 21

Proof Of Deception, Not Intention
By David Corn

I'm obsessed with the Downing Street memos. Now, I don't want to come across as a cranky lefty who waves these memos about and calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush. But I've recently appeared on several TV and radio shows and have encountered mainstream media people who dismiss the memos as nothing new. And this is getting me angry. I expect conservatives who back Bush and his war in Iraq to try to spin these documents away. They're merely following the deny-reality strategy that has worked so well for their man in the White House. It's the non-ideologues who say the memos are no big deal who get me riled.

I do think progressives who have embraced the DSM and related memos as the Holy Grail of Bush deceit may have emphasized the wrong aspects of the documents. They have tended to fixate on one portion of the first Downing Street memo—the minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting during which Richard Dearlove, the head of the British CIA, told Prime Minister Tony Blair that Bush was set on war in Iraq and "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." A-ha, DSM devotees cry, this shows Bush had decided to go to war from the start and was rigging the intelligence to grease the way.

Is the DSM evidence that Bush was not speaking honestly in the summer of 2002 when he said he was still looking to resolve the Iraq matter without resorting to war? Probably. On August 7, 2002, Bush declared in a speech, "I will explore all options and all tools at my disposal: diplomacy, international pressure, perhaps the military." (Wasn't his use of the word "perhaps" rich?) But these days that misrepresentation seems not to count much in the offices of the establishment media. Those who dismiss the DSM say everyone knew back then Bush was heading toward war, and that there were plenty of stories in the press about the preparations for war. When I was on NPR's "Diane Rehm Show", I noted that the Downing Street memo contradicted Bush's public statements at the time. USA Today's Susan Page—whom I think highly of as a political reporter and fellow talk-show gabber—said facetiously she was shocked that a president would not tell the truth about his intentions. I was going to reply that one reason why Bush (and other presidents) get away with fibbing is that too many in the press treat presidential dissembling (or "disassembling," as one perp might call it) as routine. But we had to take a break. (Granted, I don't have much of a sense of humor about presidential disingenuousness.)

It has been hard for the DSM gang to get the media fired up over an indication that Bush misled the public about his intentions. As for the fixed intelligence, that one line in the Downing Street memo is suspicious but not conclusive. If Democrats were in control of either house of Congress, they certainly would be justified in holding a hearing to determine if this sentence did mean Bush cooked the intelligence. Yet it is possible to read the line as meaning the Bushies were marshalling whatever "intelligence and facts" they had to make the case for war. There is a certain dishonesty in presenting a selective case, and a president can be blasted for doing so beyond acceptable boundaries. But that's not quite the same thing as falsifying intelligence.

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