Excerpts from the Downing Street Memos

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/19/05 at 11:18am

Even yahoo.news is picking them up now. This is how the Pentagon Papers came to light, 2005-style.

"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Excerpts From the Downing Street Memos

Updated On: 6/19/05 at 11:18 AM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/19/05 at 8:49pm

"In the March 22 memo from Foreign Office political director Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Straw, Ricketts outlined how to win public and parliamentary support for a war in Britain: "We have to be convincing that: the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for; it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran)."

Blair's government has been criticized for releasing an intelligence dossier on Iraq before the war that warned Saddam could launch chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice.

On March 25 Straw wrote a memo to Blair, saying he would have a tough time convincing the governing Labour Party that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was legal under international law.

"If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the U.S. would now be considering military action against Iraq," Straw wrote. "In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with OBL (Osama bin Laden) and al-Qaida."
Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/19/05 at 8:52pm

PJ - no time now, but will review this tomorrow mid morning.

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 6/19/05 at 9:15pm

i can't wait until this whole thing becomes a diabolical plot by rove.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 6/19/05 at 9:18pm

I think it's clear that Hitler and the Nazis are behind it all. Secret documents were discovered in Berlin that are directly tied to a plot to incriminate the U.S. and the UK as working in collusion to invade Iraq

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 6/19/05 at 9:36pm

that's sooooo boys from brazil, jose, but with that title why am i surprised it came from you?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/19/05 at 10:02pm

Such was the initial reaction to the Pentagon Papers.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 6/20/05 at 12:16pm

Papa, I think you are way too intelligent of a human being to not see that this is no longer tin foil hat wearin crybaby liberalism. Your party and President are truly in the possibility of major turmoil. And the more you smart off, the more I know--it's true.

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 6/20/05 at 12:27pm

jrb, i love it when you construct arguments in which anything i say or do supports your position no matter what. why i even respond, i'm not sure, since i could take a position diametrically opposed to yours and support it however i choose and you'd find a way to claim that i had merely reinforced your position. see, it's things like that that drive me nuts, jrb. that's why we brawl. it really has nothing to do with conservative and liberal. but if twisting my words and thoughts and ideas to mean whatever you choose that they mean makes ya feel better, knock yourself out. but don't put all your eggs in memo-gate being anything more than one more straw man.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 6/20/05 at 12:40pm

Papa, I guess you have no intellectual curiousity to see what these memos contain; You've made your mind up and don't care about the facts.

The frustrations many who are not of your political wolrdview feel come from the fact that the government and the media are currently under the control of folks who feel the same as you. You refer to the "Bush memos" that CBS fell for-- don't you think it's odd that no one has tried to find out where they came from? I'd think that with as much contempt the "Conservative Media" feels toward Rather & CBS, they'd be overturning every stone to find out where those forgeries came from...but no. In fact, it seems to my eyes that the "CM" is, like you, mocking anyone who wonders who might have been involved.

Likewise, we had an male prostitute get daily acces to the White House Press room-- something I'd think Republican Moralists would be driven to invesitage, but no.

And now, we have this memo which sure looks to prove that GW Bush lied to lead this country into a needless war. I'm eaten up with desire to find out if that's so. But, again, the people in charge are curiously uninterested. We spent close to $100 million dollars investigating a previous president's money-losing land investment--and look how that turned out! Aren't you even a little bit curious what we might find out about this one?

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 6/20/05 at 2:07pm

no, joe, my comment was specifically to jrb who took my words and twisted them to suit his own purpose.

rather than being incurious, i am certain that we'll eventually see the memos, albeit in some abridged format so as to protect someone somewhere which will then lead to a call to arms to de-classify the entire memo. then once the memos are released in their full form, there will be another cry for something else. have no fear, they'll come out. it's just not close enough to election time for them to have the most impact.

the difference in investigations and spending between previous investigations (and impeachments) and now is that there was an opposition congress and or senate at the times of them and thus political hay to be made in them. anyone who actually expects that there will be either, doesn't really understand the political process or has deluded themselves about their actual power to the point of hallucination.

with regard to the timing of planning, i feel it would have been irresponsible for the administration not to have been planning from the time they got into office for the possibility of taking out saddam. as they should ahve been doing for taking out kim jong il, the mullahs in iran, vlad putin, and just about anyone else in the world who might pose a threat to american security. it'd be pretty poor contingency planning not to do so.

in the case of iraq, i believe that it was the right thing to do to change the tenor in the region. sometimes ya have to through the cards up in the air before starting a new game and the status quo was unacceptable. saddam was the best target because he was the least liked. and before anyone starts yelping about saudi arabia, i got two words for ya: mecca and medina.

was intelligence fixed? depends on your definition of fixed. i really doubt that this memo with its one paraphrased line will prove it was. maybe i'll be wrong, but on the other hand, even if it doesn't, that really won't matter because the people who are championing it already believe it and are merely looking for more so-called proof to support their argument. c'mon, you believe with all your heart that the bush administration lied to get us into iraq, don't ya, joe? how is that different from my believing that they used the best available intelligence to build a case for invasion?

did they take into account every report that has since been cherry-picked in hindsight to point up the flaws in the argument? maybe not, but hindsight's easy. everything clearer after the fact. there's no wmds so they were wrong for going in? when even saddam's generals thought the guys next to them were the ones who had the wmds and were scared sh*tless that the wind might blow some over on them?

the memos will come out. i think they'll prove the hysteria was unwarranted. that's my view.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/20/05 at 2:26pm

The Republican party has splintered, as it did under Nixon. Bush squandered his "mandate" on an immoral war, an ill-advised Social Security plan and making an inhuman circus out of a young woman's death. The president lost the support of the American people and he is no longer capable of leading Congress. The Republican party is no longer capable of acting with unity. All Congressional power resides in John McCain and the bipartisan "Gang of 14."

All that is required is for one issue (like the memos) to take hold of the media (no longer under the control of Rove) and then take hold of the public, and the GOP will turn on their failed president like vultures, just as they did on Nixon.

Updated On: 6/20/05 at 02:26 PM

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 6/20/05 at 2:40pm

92nd congress '71-'73 (house)
255 democrats, 180 republicans

93rd congress '73-'75 (house)
242 democrats, 192 republicans, 1 independent democrat

92nd congress '71-'73 (senate)
54 democrats, 44 republicans

93rd congress '73-'75 (house)
56 democrats, 42 republicans

remember who held the keys to investigations and hearings back then, boys. but like i said, you're free to dream.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/20/05 at 2:47pm

Next week's US News & World Report

---

6/27/05

Hit by friendly fire

With his polls down, Bush takes flak on Iraq from a host of critics--including some in his own party

By Kevin Whitelaw

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

In Fallujah, Americans and Iraqis are brothers in arms.

That's strikingly blunt talk from a member of the president's party, even one cast as something of a pariah in the GOP because of his early skepticism about the war. "I got beat up pretty good by my own party and the White House that I was not a loyal Republican," he says. Today, he notes, things are changing: "More and more of my colleagues up here are concerned."

Indeed, there are signs that the politics of the Iraq war are being reshaped by the continuing tide of bad news. Take this month in Iraq, with 47 U.S. troops killed in the first 15 days. That's already five more than the toll for the entire month of June last year. With the rate of insurgent attacks near an all-time high and the war's cost set to top $230 billion, more politicians on both sides of the aisle are responding to opinion polls that show a growing number of Americans favoring a withdrawal from Iraq. Republican Sens. Lincoln Chafee and Lindsey Graham have voiced their concerns. And two Republicans, including the congressman who brought "freedom fries" to the Capitol, even joined a pair of Democratic colleagues in sponsoring a bill calling for a troop withdrawal plan to be drawn up by year's end. "I feel confident that the opposition is going to build," says Rep. Ron Paul, the other Republican sponsor and a longtime opponent of the war.

Sagging polls.

The measure is not likely to go anywhere, but Hagel calls it "a major crack in the dike." Whether or not that's so, the White House has reason to worry that the assortment of critiques of Bush's wartime performance may be approaching a tipping point. Only 41 percent of Americans now support Bush's handling of the Iraq war, the lowest mark ever in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll. And the Iraq news has combined with a lethargic economy and doubts about the president's Social Security proposals to push Bush's overall approval ratings near all-time lows. For now, most Republicans remain publicly loyal to the White House. "Why would you give your enemies a timetable?" asks House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "[Bush] doesn't fight the war on news articles or television or on polls."

Still, the Bush administration is planning to hit back, starting this week, with a renewed public-relations push by the president. Bush will host Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and has scheduled a major speech for June 28, the anniversary of the handover of power to an Iraqi government from U.S. authorities. But Congress's patience could wear very thin going into an election year. "If things don't start to turn around in six months, then it may be too late," says Hagel. "I think it's that serious."

Bush's exit strategy--which depends on a successful Iraqi political process--got a boost last week when Sunni and Shiite politicians ended weeks of wrangling over how to increase Sunni representation on the constitution-writing committee. Now, however, committee members have less than two months before their mid-August deadline. And given how long it took to resolve who gets to draft the document, it's hard to imagine a quick accord on the politically explosive issues they face.

With Ilana Ozernoy and Terence Samuel
Hit by friendly fire

[WindyCityActor]

Posted: 6/20/05 at 4:38pm

Bush's war worries

By MASSIMO CALABRESI

Of all the people to turn on George Bush's war in Iraq, Representative Walter Jones was among the least likely.
A conservative Republican whose North Carolina district includes the massive Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune, Jones led the charge to convert French fries into "freedom fries" in Capitol Hill cafeterias after France refused to support the war.

But last week Jones co-sponsored legislation calling on Bush to declare victory and start bringing the troops home by October 2006. Jones, who has written more than 1,300 letters to families of killed service members, says, "What else is there left for America to do? I think the American people are going to see this resolution as worthy."

Congress may not. But polls show that the public is growing increasingly restive: 50% of Americans think the U.S. should keep troops in Iraq, down from 55% in February, according to a Pew poll.

The Administration has also been put on the defensive by the so-called Downing Street memo, a set of minutes of a July 2002 meeting held by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In it, then British intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove asserted that during a recent visit to Washington he found that "military action [in Iraq] was now seen as inevitable" and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The memo adds significantly to other pieces of evidence that Bush was intending war while talking diplomacy--though Blair and other Administration defenders argue that while Bush was clearly making preparations for war, it could have been averted had Saddam complied fully with U.N. demands.

Still, a turning point on the war may be approaching. One sign is the apprehensiveness of military men like General John Abizaid, U.S. Central Command chief.

"We are being successful," he said last week. "I have never met a soldier in the field who has not expressed confidence about the mission. But I'm increasingly having a hard time in Washington finding people who have confidence in the mission."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/20/bush.war.tm/