Sunday St. Pete Times - DSM FRONT PAGE!

[Coexist]

4 inside columns - great read. Please thank the reporter.

http://www.stpetetimes.com/
http://www.stpetetimes.com/2005/06/26/Worldandnation/British_memo_grows_in.shtml

Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at [e-mail]

<snip>
"The St. Petersburg Times first mentioned the memo in a June 3 story about protesters who gathered outside a Tampa TV station to draw attention to it. The paper also ran a story last week about an unofficial hearing on the memo organized by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

The hearing, held in a basement room and boycotted by Republicans, ended with calls for a congressional inquiry into whether Bush should be impeached for misleading the nation."

[Botany]

1. This why Rove said all that crap .......

...... distract and attack ........

[G2099]

2. I emailed her

I just said thanks for the story. Keep up the good work.

[Coexist]

3. thanks - me too!

[Cha]

20. I just sent Susan Taylor Martin

an email, too.

[rzemanfl]

4. A good article if you read it, but Bushbots will only read the

"mythology" part, conclude all is well and go off to church for some real mythology.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. St. Pete Times Rulz!

It was one of the few good things about living on the west side of Florida.

[Kahuna]

6. I emailed her to thank her for presenting..

a factual and informative piece. She rocks!

[livvy]

7. I sent her a short note.

I thanked her and tried to explain why I thought the coverage was so important and different from articles previously published about misstatements by the nitwit and his malicious troop. I think it's the conciseness of the minutes that has such great impact. In just a few lines they say more than a dozen of other pieces could ever say. Such simple plain words speak volumes, like the difference between an hour long lecture versus a slap in the face.

[Coexist]

8. great idea.

thanks for writing her.

[kittenpants]

9. yeeeaahhhrrggghhh!

as Dean would say! My hometown paper!

[ThomWV]

10. I Sent Her This E-Mail

Quote:

Dear Ms. Martin,

Thank you very much for your well written article covering the "Downing Street Minutes" (memo), published today. It is refreshing, after a near half decade of silence, to see the almost constant stream of lies from our horribly corrupt Administration brought to light.

If I may though I'd very much like to comment on a quotation in your article. Citing Stephen Buckley, Managing Editor of the Times, you wrote "It just didn't strike us as offering a lot of dramatically new information - it seemed to confirm things that we had already put in the newspaper."
If you don't mind me suggesting this, it is not the job of newspapers to print news that's dramatic. Newspapers do better to provide information which, as Bill Moyers constantly reminds us, is necessary to preserve our democracy. We can leave the presentation of Drama to writers of fiction.

Name
Address

[Cha]

21. Thanks for that email to Susan Taylor Martin..

"We didn't do much with the memo because a lot of what was in the memo was material we had already reported on, either using wire stories out of Washington or with our own staff," says Stephen Buckley, the Times' managing editor.

"It just didn't strike us as offering a lot of dramatically new information - it seemed to confirm things that we had already put in the newspaper."

That struck me too..Except I read too fast and I thought if was the washington times and not the St Pete Times.

The News is in that it was from a meeting at 10 Downing Street..and Stephen Buckley sounds disingenuous at best.

[unhappycamper]

11. The baby NYT, a.k.a. The Boston Globe is silent about the DSM. n/t

[lala_rawraw]

12. One error though, they cited

downingstreetmemo.com, instead of afterdowningstreet.com

[Coexist]

13. delete

wrong thread.

[bunny planet]

14. Yes, that's my paper. I love the SPTimes.

[bunny planet]

15. Just sent it to all my blivet supporting relatives in Fla-la-la. I wrote

Susan Taylor Martin a letter thanking her. Told her the SPTimes didn't win a Pulitzer for nothing. They are a great paper. Also suggested she follow up with a story about the illegal bombing raids into Iraq in 2002, well before resolution 1441.

[Coexist]

16. when I wrote her, I sent her the link to the UK article

and Rawstory and mentioned Larisa is from Florida! Maybe she'll check it out.

[kittenpants]

17. my letter in which I tried to sound moderate

so that she would think I wasn't one of the people flooding her inbox...:hide:


Thanks for your great article on the Downing Street Memo. I have heard snippets of this story over the past month and had read there was a Congressional hearing, but wondered why there was not more news devoted to what seemed to be such an important issue. Your piece was wonderful in explaining the differing reactions by editors and reporters in deciding whether or not the information was significant.

I wonder though about those who say the memo is "old news," because if that is the case, then many in the media have failed to cover that story the first time around. If it is so obvious that facts were fixed and that we were aggressively increasing the air strikes against the Iraqis nearly a year before a declaration of war, then why wasn't that a bigger deal last November? No matter the individual opinion, I think the memo begs coverage because it exposes the doubts of our strongest ally during our run-up to war and calls into further question the motivation of the Bush administration in pressing this war so early on.

As you have quoted Rumsfeld from 2001 concerning an invasion of Iraq, "It would demonstrate what U.S. policy is all about." What are the reasons for our policy? And were the facts really "fixed" around it? I found those words especially ominous not only in that they were spoken just weeks after Bush's swearing in, but also in their shifting meaning. Perhaps he meant that America would demonstrate it's commitment to spreading freedom, but much of the world would interpret our policy much differently.

Thank you for your integrity in covering a story that others, for whatever reason, ignore.

[Coexist]

22. Great "moderate" letter

you sound just like Jane/John American!

[Cha]

18. Kick for reading

when I come back from running.

[Cha]

19. Maybe the Minutes from Downing Street

could help many Americans to see how the corporate news is doing them a HUGE DISSERVICE BORDERING ON TREASON!

"The memo "is a smoking gun - this is our Watergate," says Clay Colson, a community activist in Pasco County. "I read it, and when I showed it to a very diverse group of friends, the one thing on everybody's tongue was, "Why wasn't this on the front page of the newspaper?"