"Downing Street Memo Proves Nothing" read it and laugh

[undeterred]

http://www.sitnews.us/Columns/0605/061605_jay_ambrose.html

Downing Street memo proves nothing
By JAY AMBROSE
Scripps Howard News Service

June 16, 2005

Repeatedly, those contending that President Bush lied us into the war in Iraq have had to face contrary evidence, stacks and stacks of it, and how have they handled this refutation of their fantasies? By ignoring it.

But give them something all but irrelevant to the argument, some itsy, bitsy thing that they can misinterpret as demonstrating the rightness of their view, and notice how some of them behave. Why, they say, the final proof is here at last. I speak of the so-called Downing Street memo, the disclosed minutes of a meeting in 2002 between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others in his government on the subject of a possible war in Iraq, then still eight months in the distance.

snip

While we now know that this information was faulty and that there were some concerns expressed about it within the intelligence community, it wasn't just the intelligence reports that the administration had to go on. The United States gave Saddam a chance to prove the intelligence wrong. All he had to do was cooperate fully with U.N. inspectors, and he would have been off the hook. For some reason that is known only to him, he didn't, and the signal was that he still had something to hide, that all those intelligence reports were on target.

Although no weapons of mass destruction have been found, by the way, investigators have discovered that Saddam maintained programs that could have manufactured biological and chemical weapons quickly, that he had plans to reconstitute his nuclear-weapons program and that he was busily bribing officials in such places as France, Russia and China so that he could get out from under inhibiting sanctions. There are solid arguments against this war, and I respect those who make them, but there is also an extreme element that seems to have dominated much of the anti-war rhetoric - one of its illogical suppositions being that Bush would have told a lie that was sure to be found out.

[knowbody0]

1. he wants scotty's job

[buff2]

2. Sorry.......

I'm not reading that bullshit. Those freako's make me sick. :puke:

[libertypirate]

3. What's that brown

shit on the tip of his nose?

I need to keep a list of these guys.

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. Fact is, it was getting to be summertime, he had 150,000 guys

and weapons in place, so no matter what, the prick was going to invade Iraq. That's it, no excuses.

[Career Prole]

5. What the hell, they put it at the bottom of all of his columns...

That makes it public domain, right?

Contact Jay Ambrose at [e-mail].
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com

Let him know how much you respect his views.

[undeterred]

10. Good idea!

:thumbsup:

[deutsey]

6. It certainly proves what a shill Jay Ambrose is

We got that going for us.

"The harder they hit us, the louder we become." Michael Franti

[Bravo411]

7. Nice try at confusing the facts...

"The United States gave Saddam a chance to prove the intelligence wrong. All he had to do was cooperate fully with U.N. inspectors, and he would have been off the hook. For some reason that is known only to him, he didn't, and the signal was that he still had something to hide, that all those intelligence reports were on target."

Inspectors were in Iraq. The U.N. never said that Saddam wasn't complying. There was no vote on whether he had violated the U.N. Resolution 1441.

Bush decided on his own that Saddam had not complied and issued an ultimatum that Saddam step down in 48 hours. That's when the U.N. inspectors got the hell out of Iraq. Bush didn't want them to do their job because it would have shown just how wrong the U.S. intelligence had been and Bush wouldn't get his war.

[Beaverhausen]

13. The wing nuts repeat that "Saddam wasn't cooperating" over and over

and over and over. It's all they have left.

Faux but keep feeding it to them.

[Atman]

8. It is just bizarre

How many times a lie can be proven a lie, yet they just keep repeating it as fact, as though no one else in the world actually heard it. That everyone in the world had the same intel. That Bush was merely fed bad information. That Saddam was able to prove a negative (which, ironically, he ultimately proved). It is like twilight-zone stuff. It is if they just don't hear a thing, fingers in their ears, waiting for us to shut up so they can just go on and repeat the same thing one more time.

It is eery. And this guy gets PAID for this.

[MrSlayer]

9. Again the U.N. Inspectors lie.

Hussein was cooperating and Chimp ordered the inspectors the fuck out of Iraq before they could disclose for sure that Saddam had no weapons. Shit like this just nullifies the entire argument. As much as they want this not to mean anything, it does.

[Dr Fate]

11. Let Bush say all that under oath and "Let the chips fall where they may."

Unless he is hiding somthing, that is.

[stickdog]

12. My Only Reply To All This Crap Anymore is Michael Smith's Own Words.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/06/14/DI2005061401261.html?referrer=email

It is one thing for the New York Times or The Washington Post to say that we were being told that the intelligence was being fixed by sources inside the CIA or Pentagon or the NSC and quite another to have documentary confirmation in the form of the minutes of a key meeting with the Prime Minister's office. Think of it this way, all the key players were there. This was the equivalent of an NSC meeting, with the President, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, George Tenet, and Tommy Franks all there. They say the evidence against Saddam Hussein is thin, the Brits think regime change is illegal under international law so we are going to have to go to the U.N. to get an ultimatum, not as a way of averting war but as an excuse to make the war legal, and oh by the way we aren't preparing for what happens after and no-one has the faintest idea what Iraq will be like after a war. Not reportable, are you kidding me?

...

Yes there are other facts you still don't know and the media should be using these public documents as a base from which to find them out because it is those facts that will really damage Bush. Some of the media already are on the case. Knight Ridder went in very early on in this story and I see is still going. The LA Times and The Washington Post and lots of smaller papers have all been doing their bit. They need to keep going. If the administration, as it claims, did nothing wrong, it has nothing to fear from journalists looking for the facts.

...

I think in journalistic terms we need to go back to the Pentagon papers, in terms of a U.S. context you have to look at the answer I gave earlier comparing that meeting to an NSC meeting. That is its significance, that is its equivalent. It is highly damning and some of the self-serving nonsense from people who should know better in some, and it is now only some, of the U.S. media is frankly depressing.

...

There are number of people asking about fixed and its meaning. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it. The intelligence was fixed and as for the reports that said this was one British official. Pleeeaaassee! This was the head of MI6. How much authority do you want the man to have? He has just been to Washington, he has just talked to George Tenet. He said the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. That translates in clearer terms as the intelligence was being cooked to match what the administration wanted it to say to justify invading Iraq. Fixed means the same here as it does there. More leaks? I do hope so and the more Blair and Bush lie to try to get themselves off the hook the more likely it is that we will get more leaks.

[Moderator]

14. undeterred--

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[RUMMYisFROSTED]

15. "Make 'em show their cards."

And then don't.

Where the rubber hit the road.