The "Newest" Downing Street Memo
Yesterday, lots of leftist blogs were talking about The New York Times reporting on the “latest” memo revealing President Bush and Tony Blair’s nefairious plans to go to war in Iraq no matter what, even if it meant *gasp* tricking the world somehow.
Stamped “extremely sensitive,” the five-page memorandum, which was circulated among a handful of Mr. Blair’s most senior aides, had not been made public. Several highlights were first published in January in the book “Lawless World,” which was written by a British lawyer and international law professor, Philippe Sands. In early February, Channel 4 in London first broadcast several excerpts from the memo.
Since then, The New York Times has reviewed the five-page memo in its entirety. While the president’s sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.
The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was “unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.” Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.
The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.
[…]
Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation. Since they were first reported last month, neither the White House nor the British government has discussed them.
“The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours,” the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”
It also described the president as saying, “The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam’s W.M.D,” referring to weapons of mass destruction.
A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo does not indicate how Mr. Blair responded to the idea. [”Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says” (The New York Times)]
The information about the Downing Street Memos has been out for almost a year, but only now that George W. Bush’s approval ratings are in the toilet does the New York Times see fit to cover them.
[…]
In February 2002, a half-million people marched in New York City because we knew that this president was going to take us into a war based on lies. The denizens of Left Blogistan knew that this president was going to take us into a war based on lies. When the Downing Street memo first came out, the British, and anyone who bothers to read anything other than the New York Post and the New York Sun and watch anything other than Fox News, knew for certain the kind of chicanery in which Bush and Blair engaged in order to get us into this war.
And now the rest of the country should know. The question is whether they will still choose not to know, because to know is to be obligated to get involved with the political processes necessary to do something about it.[“Late isn’t always better than never” (Brilliant at Breakfast)]
So the New York Times is running a big story headlined Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says, as if it’s news. The only real news here is that they’re treating it like it’s news. As it happens, The Guardian covered the story in February, as did a whole lot of bloggers, many of whom had been covering a little thing known as The Downing Street Memos for, ahem, quite some time. Suffice it to say, the reaction to the Times‘ piece is a bit, uh, jaded in some quarters. [“Is It Really “News” If It’s Not New?” (Shakespeare’s Sister)]
O.K. So, I kind of feel the whole thing is a non-event. Really, look around. It’s the next day and no one is really talking about it. It’s kind of yesterday’s non-news already.
Do I think it’s real? Yes.
However, I think that no one’s listening — particularly to The New York Times. The right wing won’t put any credit into anything The New York Times publishes that doesn’t feed their agenda because they insist it’s a liberal-biased rag despite the fact that Judy Miller apparently was being hand fed stories for years by the White House. The left doesn’t trust the Times because of the whole Judy Miller thing. Really, the Times has lost quite a bit of credibility on both sides.
Ayway, Shakespeare’s Sister is right, this isn’t news. It’s preaching to a tired, frustrated choir. The people who need to hear it aren’t listening and don’t want to know. They can’t know because they can’t be wrong. There can’t be any truth in what those memos say, not a shred, because then they wouldn’t be able to be so self-righteous.
tags: Iraq, Downing Street Memo, George W. Bush, Tony Blair, New York Times, Judy Miller, politics, WMD, Saddam Hussein, Conspiracy Theories
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on March 28, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Big Dog said:
Hussein was shooting at our planes for years which was a breach so why invent a UN plane? We thought about assassinating Hussein in the first Gulf, probably should have.
Don’t know if the memos are real or not and at this point it does not matter. But I can’t imagine Bush and Blair would be careless enough to put that kind of stuff in writing.
Where were the memos 3 years ago? The NYT is a liberal publication that has invented plenty of stories so even if they tell the truth no one believes them. Jason Blair? Two retractions last week…. The weapons cache story that was 18 months old a week before the election.
They are NOT biased and are NOT out to get Bush…
on March 29, 2006 at 10:02 am
n. mallory said:
The thing is that the Downing Street Memos have been out for over a year and haven’t been covered in the U.S. press until the NY Times and as we’ve both said, who’s going to believe them? They’ve been covered in the British news, but of course, we can’t have them mentioned over here on this side of the pond.
Of course, after I wrote this post, I saw the Downing Street memos mentioned on CNN, so maybe they’re starting to trickle out into MSM. Still it’s old news and a lot of liberals are wondering why it took so long. I’m still wondering why no one’s ever hear about Cyrus Kar, another innocent American detainee, who’s story got supressed from MSM.
on March 29, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Big Dog said:
The DSM has been in the press. I read it and heard about it a year ago. It was a flash in the pan issue or competing with some other supposed scandal (maybe Plame)