The Downing Street Memo proves Bush lied to the American people about the war.
The left-side of the blogosphere has been bleating ceaselessly about the Downing Street Memo since the beginning of May which might lead you to wonder why the reaction to the memo has been so tepid in the scandal loving mainstream media. Well, the problem with the DSM is that there's no "there, there."
Some of the anti-war crowd's rantings about the memo have hinged on its acknowledgement of increased bombings in the Iraqi no-fly zones ("spikes of activity") during the run-up to the war. However, the increased frequency of bombings was common knowledge even back in 2002 (See here, here, & here). We had already been bombing the Iraqis in the no-fly zone and we increased the pace to soften them up a bit just in case we had to go in. It probably saved the lives of some of our soldiers and almost no one except members of Saddam's government seemed upset about it while it was actually going on. So why should it be a big deal now in 2005? The carping about it at this point is pure political gamesmanship.
Moving on to another jejune point in the memos that has led to hyperventilation among Bush foes, take a look at this line:
Quote:"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable."
Note that no particular person in the Bush administration said war is "inevitable," it's just the perception that C, AKA Sir Richard Dearlove, has. Again, we're talking about something that was common knowledge back in July of 2002, as even liberal Michael Kinsley pointed out in a notably unenthusiastic LA Times column about the DSM:
Quote:"Just look at what was in the newspapers on July 23, 2002, and the day before. Left-wing Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer casually referred to the coming war as "much planned for." The New York Times reported Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's response to a story that "reported preliminary planning on ways the United States might attack Iraq to topple President Saddam Hussein." Rumsfeld effectively confirmed the report by announcing an investigation of the leak.
A Wall Street Journal Op-Ed declared that "the drums of war beat louder." A dispatch from Turkey in the New York Times even used the same word, "inevitable," to describe the thinking in Ankara about the thinking in Washington about the decision "to topple President Saddam Hussein of Iraq by force."
Why, it almost sounds as if many people who weren't passing around secret documents saw the invasion of Iraq as "inevitable," even back then! I guess those "secret" memos aren't as as chock full of sensitive information as you'd think.
But, let's move on to the meat of the DSM. Via Wikipedia, here the part of the Downing Street Memo that has caused the most "excitement" on the left:
Quote: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. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
Basically the charge here is supposed to be that Bush "fixed" the evidence for the war.
When the word "fixed" is mentioned in the memo, it's obviously not being used as Americans would use it if they were talking about "fixing" a horse race. Instead, the writer was trying to get across that the Bush administration was attempting to build a solid case to justify its policy publicly. That's certainly not a unique way of looking at it either. For example, John Ware, a reporter at the very liberal BBC, seems to have roughly the same interpretation:
Quote:"Several well placed sources have told us that Sir Richard Dearlove was minuted as saying: "The facts and the intelligence were being fixed round the policy by the Bush administration." By 'fixed' the MI6 chief meant that the Americans were trawling for evidence to reinforce their claim that Saddam was a threat."
Furthermore, to even try to interpret the Downing Street Memo as supporting the idea that Bush was making up evidence -- presumably about weapons of mass destruction -- is extremely difficult to square with the fact that the DSM itself makes it absolutely clear that the British believed Saddam had WMDs. From the DSM:
Quote:"For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary."
If the Bush administration and the Brits believed Saddam had WMDs and was capable of using them, what exactly is supposed to have been forged? Nothing of course, because that's not how the person taking the notes meant it to be interpreted. If he'd known his notes were ever going to be read by the public, I'm sure he would have been more careful about ambiguous phrasing that could be willfully misinterpreted for political gain.
On top of all that, there have already been investigations that have cleared the Bush administration of doing anything shady on the intelligence front. As Cassandra at Villainous Company correctly pointed out:
Quote:Quote (the DSM) all you want. Is there some evidence to back this up? Say, to refute the conclusions of the Butler Report (British), the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, or the 9/11 Commission, which all concluded that there was no improper manipulation of intelligence? Or are we now willing to disregard the conclusions of three official inquiries on the strength of one (word in an) unattributed set of minutes from a single foreign staff meeting?"
The Downing Street Memo is a lot of hullabaloo over nothing of note.
source for lie #8 including links.
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