Conason..."The Last Laugh" ...Us Press.(Get the Salon Day Pass...FREE!)

[KoKo]

pB]Conason: The Last Laugh



History will hold Bush and Blair accountable for their lies in the run-up to the Iraq war, even if the D.C. press corps just finds them funny.

On Tuesday, more than a month after the "Downing Street memo" first appeared on Britain's front pages, a Reuters correspondent asked George W. Bush and Tony Blair to explain the secret document that says the Bush administration had decided by July 2002 to invade Iraq -- and that the intelligence on Saddam Hussein's arsenal was then being "fixed" to bolster an otherwise exceedingly "thin" justification for war.

While the president and the prime minister airily attempted to dismiss the explosive memo -- just as many mainstream and conservative journalists in the United States did at first -- they have a lot more explaining to do. History will hold them accountable even if the press does not. For unlike previous indications of Bush's duplicity in promoting the war, this document provides historical evidence of a kind that usually remains hidden in a vault for years or even decades.

The Downing Street memo meets a higher standard of proof than gossip from one of Bob Woodward's unnamed sources or the memoirs of a disgruntled former official like Paul O'Neill. It is the official classified record of a crucial meeting of the British government's security cabinet on July 23, 2002 -- including the prime minister, the attorney general, the foreign secretary, the defense secretary and the chief of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. It details their worried discussion of their American ally's premature and absolute determination to wage a war that the president publicly claimed he hoped to avoid, and of the difficulty they would have in justifying that war.

Stodgy and fearful, the Washington press corps seemed unable to process this revelatory document, concocting various excuses to ignore it or relegate it to the back pages. Until Tuesday, it seemed likely to fade into the archives, despite the best efforts of dissident politicians and bloggers.

more…

http://salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/06/10/downing_street_memo/index_np.html

[seemslikeadream]

1. It is the official classified record of a crucial meeting

and 1/2 million signatures

[teach1st]

2. Working link

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/06/10/downing_street_memo/index.html

[KoKo]

3. "...brandishes the smoking memoin faces and laughs...they laugh with him

(Conason gives the most scathing indictment of the "WHORE PRESS." "they laugh and he laughs with them." :puke: how low can they go..the so-called MSM Press. :shrug:

Quote from end of this great article:

or anyone who recalls the blazing indignation of the Washington press corps and the nation's talking heads after Bill Clinton lied about his sad philandering, the passive media response to this president's fatal dishonesty is astonishing.

He brandishes the "smoking memo" in their faces and laughs -- and they laugh with him."

[snowbear]

4. Thanx for sharing that.. I love Joe Conason...

And it's not just what he has to say.. but how he says it..

Like General Clark, he's an eloquent speaker and has the kind of voice you can listen to forever! :hug:



Thank you to Al Franken for bringing him to the airwaves EVERY Friday! :)

[KoKo]

7. yeah....I know...there's no one who can get to it like Conason..

He's the best...:loveya: to "Smokin' Joe."

That phrase..."...he laughed (Chimp)...and they laughed with him" about the MSM Whores just sent chills into my bones...UGH...

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. The Sunday Times has just published their newest installment

another shoe just dropped.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1541405&mesg_id=1541405

[flpoljunkie]

6. Thanks for posting. Conason kicks ass and takes names! Must read.

Nominated.

[seemslikeadream]

8. more from the article

At the time, like his friend Bush, Blair was telling his public and elected officials that he had made no decision to invade Iraq. But still another memo shows that his denials were misleading. In a classified report, Sir David Manning, the prime minister's foreign policy advisor, informed Blair about his March 14, 2002, meeting with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. "I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change, but you had to manage a press, a parliament, and a public opinion.

Or as Christopher Meyer, then the British ambassador to the United States, put it in still another leaked memo, dated March 18, 2003, about a conversation with Rice: "We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option."

In other words, as the Downing Street memo also indicates, the United Nations was nothing more than the stage set for a "clever" plan to manage public opinion. At the July 23 meeting, Foreign Minister Jack Straw admitted that the case against Iraq "was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran." Straw's solution was to "work up an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the U.N. weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."

According to the memo, Blair hoped that Saddam would cooperate -- by refusing to cooperate with the U.N. "The prime minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors ... Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD ... If the political context were right, people would support regime change."

There was no discussion at the July 23 meeting, or in any of the leaked documents, about how to avoid war -- although Blair continues to insist that was his fondest wish.

Both Blair and Bush have frequently asserted, as the prime minister again repeated at the White House this week, that in fact Saddam didn't comply with the U.N. resolutions. Indeed, Blair rather strangely behaves as if the world hadn't seen the inspectors return to Iraq during the weeks before the invasion; as if the world hadn't watched the destruction of illegal missile parts found by the inspectors; as if the world hadn't learned, after exhaustive post-invasion searching, that there were simply no weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq.

[AuntiBush]

10. bLair, Bush, Cheney, SleezyRice, Rummy, ROVE, ASS-Cough

and the rest, MYERS, etc. need to GO!

Bring back the 2 that really won: GORE/KERRY!

Diplomacy Worldwide
Push for Peace!
Restore America & World

Please...please, please, please...

[AuntiBush]

9. Thank you for callling them "Documentations" Salon!

Not just a memo as that's just the "tip" of the sinking iceburg!

CNN: Don't let us down! Stocked-up on plenty of

:popcorn::popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:

Have grown tired of waiting for my country to return to normalcy!

:patriot::patriot::patriot::patriot:

[Spazito]

11. Conason hits it out of the park yet again

He is right on point as usual.