The Downing Street Memos: piecing together the political puzzle

[brettdale]

The Downing Street Memos: piecing together the political puzzle


http://www.newstarget.com/009414.html


It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam," Peter Rickets, political director of the British foreign office, told Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in the March 22, 2002 Downing Street memo. Though many British and American anti-war groups have questioned the war against Iraq and the search for Osama bin Laden from the beginning, the now-famous Downing Street memos may be the catalyst that sparks their grumbling into a decisive roar. For the British, the first Downing Street memo -- a minute-by-minute record of a meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Straw and other top officials -- reinforced the prevailing anti-war sentiment among the British populace. Over a million Britons took to the streets to protest British involvement in the war at its start, and they still want no part of it now. "The assumption is that Britons delivered their verdict on Iraq by cutting Labour's majority," writes Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian article. "Yes, they did lie to us."