Slate's Kaplan: What's Really in the Downing Street Memo?

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.slate.com/id/2120886/

Let's Go to the Memo
What's really in the Downing Street memos?
By Fred Kaplan
Updated Wednesday, June 15, 2005, at 3:00 PM PT


Is there anything important in the Downing Street memo? This is the now-notorious secret transcript of a British ministerial meeting on July 23, 2002—obtained and published by the Sunday Times of London just this past May Day—which seems to suggest that, nine months before the war in Iraq got started, the Bush administration a) knew Saddam Hussein didn't pose a threat; b) decided to overthrow him by force anyway; and c) was "fixing" intelligence to sell the impending invasion to a duped American public.

<>The "killer quote" in the original Sunday Times story is this passage from the July 23 ministers' meeting:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

"C" is the code name for Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, the British foreign intelligence service. His "recent talks in Washington" would almost certainly have been with his counterpart, George Tenet, then-director of the CIA. Tenet would have told him about the "perceptible shift in attitude." What accounts for it? "Bush wants to remove Saddam through military action."

This is about as solid as the evidence gets on these matters: By mid-summer 2002—at a time when Bush was still assuring the American public that he regarded war as a "last resort"—the president had in fact put it on his front burners.

more...

__________________________

This, as I have mentioned before, is the heart of the matter. President Bush knowingly lied to the American people when he said that "war was his last resort." That is what these memos make plain and ought to be an impeachable offense--lying the country into war--particularly this war-- unnecessary, poorly planned and increasingly catastrophic.

No Democrat could behave so irresponsibly and incompetently and get away with it.

[Triana]

1. "No Democrat could behave so irresponsibly and incompetently...

and get away with it."

As much as any of the rest of this bursting pus sack, THIS burns me up too. :mad:

NOT that I think a Democrat ought to be able to do this type of thing and get away with it. I think NO POLITICIAN ought to be able to do this type of thing and get away with it and that includes that beady-eyed little (W)easel in the White House.

[Village Idiot]

2. Really?

"No Democrat could behave so irresponsibly and incompetently and get away with it."

You mean JFK couldn't have done something like this? I'll keep THAT in mind.

I would like to think that "no Democrat WOULD," but even THAT's out the window...

Remember...the justifications...

The Carolina
The Alamo
The Lusitania
Pearl Harbour
The Gulf of Tonkin
The USS Cole
September 11th...

Understand?