Times UK: How the leaked documents ... emerged from Britain's Deep Throat

[Newsjock]

Edit to supply hopefully better link without subscription worries, thanks to Pirate Smile.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1669292,00.html

June 26, 2005
How the leaked documents questioning war emerged from 'Britain's Deep Throat'
It started with a phone call and has now swept across America: Michael Smith tells the tale of his ‘Downing Street memo’ scoop

It began with a phone call from a friend nearly 10 months ago — somebody well-placed who had given me a few stories before. But he wasn’t really a journalistic source, though he has now been dubbed “the British Deep Throat” by some of the US press.

He was just a friend. So I had no great expectations of the meeting we arranged in a quiet West End bar. I was just expecting a convivial drink, with the usual exchange of gossip, the catching-up on how our lives were going.

Almost immediately it was clear that this time it would be something more. The place was empty, but my friend chose the most secluded spot he could find. He was clearly nervous.

He wasn’t sure if I’d be interested in what he had, he said. It was about the run-up to the war. “All the Butler stuff,” he said, referring to Lord Butler, who had reported on the failures of intelligence over Iraq.

more

[Cha]

1. Darn..all I could find was that

I had to subscribe online to read the rest of the exciting account.

[Bozita]

3. try bugmenot -- link

www.bugmenot.com

[Cha]

5. Thanks, I'm tryin'..

the first link didn't work even with bugmenot.

[lancdem]

10. You can find it on google news

Just plug in "british deep throat" and it comes up.

[Cha]

17. Thanks, lancdem..I think every

thinking person should read this account..it's riveting, especially having worked so hard through all of this as we all have.

[OKNancy]

8. Copy the headline, then go to google news

paste the headline in googlenews.

How the leaked documents questioning war emerged from 'Britain's Deep Throat'


The link will take you there and you can read the whole thing. You have to read it in one sitting because if you try it again, it usually doesn't work a second time.

[Cha]

12. Thanks, I just read it!

Hope I can keep it on my favorites.

It was brilliant!

[ClassWarrior]

2. Dingit! You gotta subscribe...

Is the DSM a devious plot by Murdoch to gin up subscriptions from Progressives? <LOL>

NGU.

[Newsjock]

4. Use bugmenot

Not all of the offered usernames work, but I found one that did. Saw the whole story.

[Cha]

6. Can you tell us which "username"

worked? :)

[Newsjock]

9. Try

Info removed; Pirate Smile found a link that seems to work without subscription.

[Cha]

14. I did and it works wonderfully!

Thanks for getting us interested! Whoa..Big Time!

[ClassWarrior]

11. Yeah, right. None of their logins work.

NGU.

[Pirate Smile]

7. psst. try this link.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1669292,00.html

[Cha]

13. Pirate Smile..thank you!

Nifty link you have there..

"Last week one US blogger, Larisa Alexandrovna of RawStory.com, unearthed more unsettling evidence. It was an overlooked interview with Lieutenant-General T Michael Moseley, the allied air commander in Iraq, in which he appears to admit that the “spikes of activity” were part of a covert air war.

From June 2002 until March 20, when the ground war began, the allies flew 21,736 sorties over southern Iraq, attacking 349 carefully selected targets. The attacks, Moseley said, “laid the foundations” for the invasion, allowing allied commanders to begin the ground war.

The bloggers may have found their own smoking gun."

[Pirate Smile]

15. I just googled for the paper and went in through the link it provided.

"Then eight months later, in the run-up to Britain’s general election, with the focus on the attorney-general’s advice to Blair on the legality of war, somebody else gave me further, even more startling documents. They concerned a meeting in Downing Street on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion, when Blair was insisting to the public that all options on Iraq were still open.

One leaked document was a Cabinet Office briefing paper for a crucial Downing Street meeting held on the day in question. It said the prime minister had promised Bush at the Crawford summit that he would “back military action to bring about regime change”. It added that ministers had no choice but to “create the conditions” that would make military action legal.

The other document was the minutes of the actual meeting, chaired by Blair and attended by Straw; Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary; Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general; Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6; John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee; and Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff.

Dearlove, who had just returned from Washington, said “military action was now seen as inevitable . . . the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action”.
Straw agreed with Dearlove. He said Bush had “made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin”. "

[Cha]

16. I'll have to remember that..thanks.

"I think there is a real risk that the (US) administration underestimates the difficulties,” Manning wrote. “They may agree that failure isn’t an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.”

"When I reported these documents I was surprised to find that there was no real interest in them in America. The story swiftly died away."

Our US Corporate press needs to be indicted for Crimes Against Humanity!

They beat the DRUM so LOUDLY for War On Iraq and now want to cover it up.

[Pirate Smile]

19. WooHoo, Larisa! He credited you for your work. Awesome.

:toast: :patriot:

[lala_rawraw]

22. He is nice guy... great accent

And very polite. I respect him a great deal. He was very pleased to get his thank you letters from DU. So might be nice to keep pushing them.
LA

[lala_rawraw]

21. I am breaking this on Monday... so it might sound like

a smoking water gun now, but tip my hat to Mick, he is amazing. oh, and Raw not blog, but no biggie, may as well be, given that Blogs are the people's voice.

[bleever]

24. Big cheer for Rawstory and Larisa!

:yourock:

[lala_rawraw]

29. Hold on...

I just had a mild stroke... someone at another progressive forum said that I was full of shit. Are we eating our own again for some reason?

[bleever]

38. Keep your helmet on, and don't let yourself get distracted,

especially by the cranky people. They're everywhere!

:)

[lala_rawraw]

40. Thanks....I am a bit pissed over all

and cranky because I have not slept since 2001.

:D

[suffragette]

41. Thank you for never giving up

Larisa, you're great and the work you do is important. Ignore the naysayers and keep doing what you do.

[zoeb]

18. The memos are fake

or at least that is my father's republican take on it. Of course I don't have to tell you were he get's his news.

:shrug:

[Cha]

23. They wish it were "fake" ..that

way they don't have to account for being taken in by an S O B's Lies on going to a war that is Losing our Country it's Blood and Treasure!

I doubt if they would be upset about the Murder of Iraq and it's citizens.

[Teaser]

20. This means no more documents

When a newspapers runs a retrospective piece like this, it mean their source has run dry. Too bad.

[bleever]

25. Recommended. They'll be talking about this decades from now.

Everyone at DU who reads the article (I used Pirate Smile's link) will be glad that they did.


:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Patsy Stone]

28. I believe

you are correct. :hi:

[lovuian]

26. This is proof ya don't need anymore than this!!!

this is grounds for Impeachment add the Colin Powell UN sell job of satelite pictures and reports by Chalibi the US & Iran double agent

plus President's Bush declaration of War on the Iraq who had Weapons of Mass Destruction ready to destroy us in 45 minutes

all this plus the FBI allowing the Saudis to leave during freeze on all air flights and most of them were Bin Laudin's family

do I have to go on and on and on!!!

[lala_rawraw]

27. Actually, you have grounds for Treason...

Under the statue, by flying the Bin Ladens and circle of friends out of the country right after the attacks, the administration "aided and gave comfort" to the enemy. That act alone is treason.

Outing Plame is also treason as signed into law by Bush 41.

2 counts now. So we need not even look at Iraq, we have 2 counts of treason and we have more than "2 witnesses" to the acts of treason.

[magellan]

30. Focus: Secret memos fuel US doubt on Iraq (London Sunday Times)

You can sometimes tell when a political conversation is at a turning point because the rhetoric goes nuclear. With respect to the Iraq war, that is what is beginning to happen in America.

Last week saw Dick Durbin, a leading Democratic senator, compare an account of detainee treatment at Guantanamo Bay with prisoner abuse in totalitarian regimes. It also saw Karl Rove, the president’s most powerful political aide, essentially call all “liberals” a danger to their country for their response to 9/11 and the Iraq war.

Chuck Hagel, a leading Republican senator, called the White House “completely disconnected from reality. It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along”. The internet blogs and the op-eds were full of similarly calm discourse.

It’s not that the Bush administration policy is likely to change any time soon. It’s that the American people have reached a point of no return with the president and his constant and unpersuasive assertions that everything is just peachy in Mesopotamia.

more... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1669291,00.html

[OKNancy]

31. This is by Andrew Sullivan

FWIW.

[thebigidea]

32. the sound of his awful voice makes me want to drive nails into my ears

"The fact that the insurgents have no real alternative to offer the Iraqi people except mayhem and tyranny will count in Bush’s favour."

what a complete fucking moron - he's applying the rhetoric of the 2004 campaign to a resistance movement.

As if Bush has anything to offer the Iraqi people besides mayhem and tyranny...

The "insurgents" don't need a fucking alternative, an ad campaign, or a plan for social security - they just. want. to. drive. us. out.

God, what a moron.

[rodeodance]

33. "everything is just [NOT]peachy in Mesopotamia."

fron the Times article

[rodeodance]

34. ".Some kind of tipping point is approaching"--oh god I do hope so!

.....Some kind of tipping point is approaching — either for or against the entire venture.

[rodeodance]

35. Sullivan credits the DSM's as leading to this 'tipping point' -grand.

......The doubts have increased markedly since America woke up to the secret Downing Street memos that shatter illusions about the build-up to war. The memos — first revealed in The Sunday Times by Michael Smith on May 1 — have since stormed through American websites and made headlines in the mainstream US media.

Last weekend the Associated Press agency moved a special package of six articles on the memos to its media subscribers throughout America.

The memos reveal that Tony Blair agreed to support President George W Bush’s plans for regime change as early as April 2002 — a year before the war started. They also show that the head of MI6 reported back from America to Blair that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”.

They describe American efforts to find a cause for war as “frankly unconvincing”. And, perhaps most damningly in US eyes, the memos reveal that little effort was made to plan for the aftermath of invasion — which is still costing hundreds of American and Iraqi lives — despite warnings that it could be messy. ....

[Spazito]

36. Kick for the Times and Raw Story

*

[Straight Shooter]

37. I would prefer not to have a "cloak and dagger" approach to this.

I watched Michael Smith online in an interview and he came across as quite pragmatic. This kind of writing ... I don't know ... detracts from that. We don't need to gild this lily.

I want the right wing to scream "faaaaaaake" at the top of their lungs and then have the source reveal himself, and the original documents.

[Scout1071]

39. Make sure you email it!

That way they can track the sheer volume of emails from the US. I'm sure they can track anyway, but it can't hurt.