Downing Street Memo Activists "Wing Nuts," "Paranoid"

[steve2470]

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2545

<snip>


Los Angeles Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley opted for sarcasm over serious discussion, deriding activists in a June 12 column for sending him emails "demanding that I cease my personal cover-up of something called the Downing Street Memo." Kinsley kidded that the fuss was a good sign for the Left: "Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes ideological self-confidence."

What does Kinsley mean by paranoid? Criticizing the Times for not giving the story much attention would be accurate: Prior to the Bush-Blair press conference, a Nexis search shows one story about the Downing Street minutes appeared in the paper nearly two weeks after the story broke (5/12/05), and that columnist Robert Scheer mentioned it a few days later (5/17/05).

In fact, Kinsley's mocking seemed to serve no purpose, since his fallback position is a familiar media defense: We all knew the Bush administration wanted war, so this simply isn't news. As Kinsley put it, "Of course, you don't need a secret memo to know this." As for "intelligence and facts...being fixed around the policy," Kinsley eventually acknowledged that "we know now that this was true."

So, to follow Kinsley's logic: People who demand more Downing Street coverage have developed a "paranoid theory" that accurately portrays White House decision-making on Iraq. His only quarrel with what he calls a "vast conspiracy" pushing the mainstream media to take the memo more seriously is that the activists think such information is important, and should be brought to the attention of the public, whereas Kinsley--and apparently many others in the mainstream media--doesn't "buy the fuss."

[Julius Civitatus]

1. You can always count on a "so-called liberal" columnist to trash liberals

and ridicule our causes.

Funny thing, Kinsley still claims the premise of the DSM is CORRECT. Still, he has to do the Bushies' bidding and unfairly disinform the public about these memos.

So far the major enemies of the DSM have been the New York Times and the LA Times. Even Blair and the UK secret service admit of the seriousness of these minutes.

Still, you have the so called American "liberal media" trying to kill this story at all costs.

Assholes!

:banghead:

[opiate69]

2. Worthless Bush*Groupies Delusional, Terrified...

[EVDebs]

3. Crazy like foxes ? Or mad as hell and won't take it anymore ? n/t

[In Truth We Trust]

4. and he is supposedly liberal. he should resign for this. how disingenuous

[steve2470]

5. more from the same article...

<snip>

A June 7 White House press conference with George W. Bush and Tony Blair offered the first public response from Bush to the memo, and with that came an upswing in U.S. media attention. But some in the media took it as a chance to lash out at the activists who have been bringing attention to the story all along. On June 8, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank referred to Downing Street Memo activists--some of whom were offering a cash reward for the first journalist to ask Bush about the memo--as "wing nuts." He also offered an illogical explanation for the memo's low media profile:


"In part, the memo never gained traction here because, unlike in Britain, it wasn't election season, and the war is not as unpopular here. In part, it's also because the notion that Bush was intent on military action in Iraq had been widely reported here before, in accounts from Paul O'Neill and Bob Woodward, among others. The memo was also more newsworthy across the Atlantic because it reinforced the notion there that Blair has been acting as Bush's 'poodle'."

<snip>

[applegrove]

6. I read Woodward's book on the years of planning up to the War in

Iraq. Was obvious then that they had a thing form Iraq. Many former WH insiders went public with the pre-planning. Remember the "encased in amber" quote? That went back to the first days of the Bush Administration.

Though DSM confirms all these accounts, it is not wrong to have the discussion. And too bad for the Bush WH that the Brits still have a democracy and people who believe in an honest rendering of the facts.

I don't know why MK calls this paranoid. It is just confirmation of all the stuff that was said in the run up & after the start of the Iraq war.

PNAC was hot of Clinton's tail to invade Iraq well before Bush got into power. Are PNAC paranoid? Well yes - they are a bunch of paranoid Utopians.

IMHO the paranoids are the ones in the WH who cannot run foreign policy in an honest fashion and insist on absolute control of information in the vain attempt to recreate the world in their narrow images. The paranoids are the ones who insist on controlling everything. The paranoids are the ones who cannot deal with a future where America is not king. And seeing as how America doesn't have the population or the resources to be king...they now invade space and our minds to try and establish dominance. The paranoids are the ones who cannot deal with their past and their wrong headed anti-democracy policies in the ME for the last 30 years. Their fear of not owning oil, or preferring to make oil deals with the elites, meant that groups like bin Laden emerged. And radical Islamism.

The problem is that at the time the first facts about Bush pre-planning an invasion of Iraq came out - Americans were being patriotic and some believed Iraq would be a cakewalk. Now we look at the same collusion news and we see it in a different context. Because the Iraq war has the ability to destabilize the whole ME now. So we will all pay for the wrongheaded way in which they went into Iraq and Rumsfield's wrongheaded battle plans that reduced American forces by 200,000.

Neocon policies just don't work. It is vanity and megalomania and Utopia and it fails every time. Calling people who are upset over the way this war happened and the way it was implemented, is just their own fears that their brand will be marred. And why not - they always fail.

I think MK is terrified that the ME will turn into a big pot of hell. I think he lashes out in anger at DSM people. When they are not the issue. If anything - aligning with people in the Middle East may help to heal some wounds occurring there.

So bring on the Saddam trials. And bring on the DSM. So that we people can hash the truth out altogether and come to some new understanding of each other and neocons.

Myths don't work. When people are scarred - they want the truth.

[hootinholler]

7. You're not paranoid

When they really are out to get you.

-Hoot

[Julius Civitatus]

8. kick n/t