July 23, 2005
Events To Mark 3rd Anniversary of Downing Street Memo
The Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) noted in a July 21, 2005 press release that, On Saturday, July 23, over 300 events organized [in the United States] by the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition and Rep. John Conyers will mark the three-year anniversary of the meeting at No. 10 Downing Street in London that was recorded in the now infamous minutes known as the "Downing Street memo."
IPA said, "Members of Congress will be hosting some of the events, including ones in Detroit, Inglewood, Calif., Seattle, Oakland, Calif., and New York City." Here's more.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2005
Town Hall Meetings Scheduled In U.S. On Downing Street Memo
U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) issued a press release on July 15, 2005 that said, "In commemoration of the third anniversary of the infamous Downing Street Meeting, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., along with Representatives Hinchey, Lee, McDermott, Waters, Becerra, Frank, Rangel, and Tom Udall, will host town hall meetings nationwide to discuss the manipulation of prewar intelligence, the unclassified Downing Street Minutes, White House improprieties committed by Karl Rove and other Bush Administration officials, and the war in Iraq." According to the release, Over the past two months, 131 Members of Congress have written the President and some 575,000 people have signed a petition demanding answers from the White House. All of these inquiries have gone unanswered. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are informed, organized, and waiting for a response to these letters. Because they continue to be met with silence, Members of Congress will now be taking this issue directly to the American people in the hopes that the Administration will finally be held accountable.
"Each town hall meeting will feature a variety of speakers, local celebrities and other participants," the release added, noting that, "Specific details for each event will be provided by the members offices."
Each member will hold meetings in his or her congressional district.Here's the press release.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)
July 23 Marks Three-Years Since Meeting British Memo Summarizes
Political Affairs.Net, a journal of Marxist thought, noted in a July 14, 2005 report that, "Saturday, July 23 is the three-year anniversary of the meeting between high-level U.S. and British officials that the Downing Street Memo summarizes.
The journal said, "According to the memo, Military action was now seen as inevitable. 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." Here's more.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)
June 30, 2005
Keep The Downing Street Memo Debate Going
"If you are against war, then forget about the Downing Street memos," advisers Brendan O'Neill, deputy editor of the online magazine Spiked, in an article in the June 29, 2005 edition of The Christian Science Monitor. "The debate about war should be political and moral, not legalistic; we should interrogate the consequences of war for those on the receiving end, and for peace more broadly - not get hung up over what some British official wrote on a piece of paper."
"In short," Mr. O'Neill said, "we need a political opposition to war - because, more than two years since Iraq was invaded, we still don't have one."
I disagree with Mr. O'Neill. The moral and political approach didn't work. Those who tried to start a debate on the war were accused of being unpatriotic and aiding "the enemy." Because of the gang-attack that could come from some conservative attack dogs in the blogosphere, many prominent citizens were too afraid to discuss the war and the deception used to get the American people behind it.
On that note, I say the legalistic approach is best because it is slow, methodical and places emphasis on documentary evidence to bolster circumstantial and testimonial evidence. As those of us in the legal profession knows, the discovery of a document that destroys a witnesses testimony, the other sides case or confirms a theory of a case is like a baseball playing hitting a bases loaded home run that wins a game. Of course, the war is no game. It has caused death for thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of American service people, with thousands crippled for life.
See "It's no secret: Hung up on memos, antiwar lobby has been ineffective" for more of Mr. O'Neill's argument.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 09:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
U.S., Britain May Have Started Iraq War Before March 2003
An article in the June 30, 2005 issue of The Christian Science Monitor says the "Downing Street memo" and "other documents may show" that Britain and the United States' war on Iraq "really started earlier than March 2003." See "Secret air campaign against Iraq?" for more.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 08:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Downing Street Memo Is Definitely Playing In Peoria
Cynthia Bogard at CommonDreams.org recalled in a June 29, 2005 analysis of coverage of the Downing Street Memo by hometown newspapers across the United States that, "Jefferson Morley, a staff writer at washingtonpost.com, suggested recently that the Downing Street Memo (DSM) story continues to spread because it represents two stories, "an emerging alternative history of how the United States came to attack Iraq and a story of how the New Media has usurped some of the Old Media's power to set the agenda." Ms. Bogard also wrote: The "New Media" --the blogosphere and alternative news and views websites such as rawstory.com, buzzflash.com, commondreams.org and, especially pertinent to this story, afterdowningstreet.org--certainly deserve a lot of credit. On-line complaints about Old Media's neglect of the story have had a major impact. So has the "letters to the editors" campaign started by the original downingstreetmemo.com site that has deluged newspapers around the nation with reader demands for DSM coverage. Old Media--television and the major daily newspapers, The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and perhaps the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune--finally have begun to get the message that the DSM story is not going to go away because New Media is not going to let it. But even if the DSM story helps to reshape the fourth estate as seems increasingly likely, it's the "alternative history" the DSM represents and its potential to end a needless war and rein in a rogue administration that must be focused on right now.
She said, "If the DSM story is to be effective as a political story, the citizenry needs to be informed. And while New Media and Old Media fight their battle, it just might be our nation's first media--the hometown paper--that ensures that the DSM as a story about the world being misled into a illegal war continues to make its way into the nation's consciousness." Ms. Bogard noted, asking" "Is the DSM story playing in Peoria, that classic mid-country metaphor for small-town America?You betcha it is." she concluded.
I agree. In fact, these papers, not the big east coast papers, are driving the coverage with articles and editorials. If not for them, the story probably wouldn't have gotten traction in middle America. See "But Is It Playing in Peoria? The Downing Street Memo and Our Hometown Papers" for more.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 08:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Is Blair Really Astonished By Coverage of Downing Street Memos?
The Diplomatic Times Review is not surprised that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is denying the accuracy of the Downing Street Memos, which suggest that U.S. President George W. Bush was determined to invade Iraq despite a lack of evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was involved in Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. The Associated Press, which interviewed Mr. Blair June 29, 2005, put it this way: Despite his strong linkage of the Iraq campaign to the Sept. 11 attacks, Blair denied that the decision to go to war had been fixed long before it was carried out. He said the so-called "Downing Street memos," which suggest the Bush administration had made up it mind to invade by 2002, painted a distorted picture.
"People say the decision was already taken. The decision was not already taken," he said. The AP said, "according to the minutes of the meeting where the leaked memos were taken, Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of Britain's intelligence service, said the White House viewed military action against Saddam Hussein as inevitable following the Sept. 11 attacks.
President Bush "wanted to remove Saddam, through military action." See "Blair 'Astonished' by Coverage of Memos" for more.
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Chicago Tribune Publishes Downing Street Memo Article
The June 30, 2005 issue of the Chicago Tribune has an article on The Downing Street Memo. Written by Washington Post correspondent Glenn Frankel , the article noted that: In the spring of 2002, two weeks before British Prime Minister Tony Blair journeyed to Crawford, Texas, to meet with President Bush at his ranch about the confrontation with Iraq, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sounded a warning."The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few," Straw wrote in a March 25 memo to Blair. "The risks are high, both for you and for the Government."In public, British officials were declaring their solidarity with the Bush administration's calls for elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But Straw's memo and seven other secret documents disclosed in recent months by British journalist Michael Smith reveal a much different picture. Behind the scenes, key British officials believed the U.S. administration already was committed to a war that they feared was ill-conceived and illegal.
"Yet," Mr. Frankel added, " they could not dissuade their counterparts in the Bush administration nor Blair from going forward."
See "Memos show Britons' doubts over Iraq war. Ministers repeatedly warned premier that U.S. was on thin ice" for more.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 06:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lynn Sweet Comments On Downing Street Memo Campaign
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet describes her experience of being on the receiving end of the campaign to get mainstream journalists to pay attention to the Downing Street Memo. Interestingly, some journalists have dismissed the contents of the memo as "old news. But Ms. Sweet didn't. She wrote in her June 30, 2005 column: Late Tuesday morning, my Blackberry starting buzzing non-stop. So many e-mails were coming in, all on the same theme, that I knew I was being targeted somewhere in the blogosphere.
This specific stream of e-mails written with passion but pleasantly without the usual vitriol ginned up by ultra-partisan sites, essentially all had the same message: The Chicago Sun-Times needed to pay more attention to British government documents dubbed the "Downing Street Memo.''Ms. Sweet paid attention to the memo, "even without the prodding of the bloggers. I had been interested in the Downing Street documents, if there was an angle I could pursue," she wrote.
See "Sidestepping on Downing Street" for her attempt to get World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who as deputy secretary of defense was a strong advocate of invading and occupying Iraq, to talk about the memo.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 06:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 2005
WSJ: 'Downing Street Memo' Has Lingering Effect
Staff writer Christopher Cooper reported in the June 28, 2005 issue of The Wall Street Journal that: A series of three-year-old British documents seized upon by those who think the Bush administration manipulated intelligence before the war with Iraq has demonstrated unusual staying power. That is due in part to declining public support for the conflict but it also has much to do with an Internet campaign by war critics prodding journalists to talk about them.
Documents detailing the run-up to the Iraq war have been splashed across London newspapers since they surfaced in the fall and hit a crescendo on May 1 with the publication of the so-called Downing Street memo. Mr. Cooper told Journal readers that. "After a slow start in the U.S., a half-dozen liberal activists are having some success in making the documents fodder for Capitol Hill rhetoric and White House news briefings."
"Their campaign comes at a dicey point for President Bush, who has seen support for his Iraq policy erode amid the insurgent violence that has followed January elections in that country," he wrote. "A spate of recent bombings in Iraq has taken a heavy toll on Iraqi security forces and has produced fresh anxiety in the U.S. about how long American troops will have to remain in Iraq. "See 'Downing Street Memo 'Has Lingering Effect" for the full report.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 07:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 26, 2005
The Downing Street Memo And The 2002 Covert Air War On Iraq
What does Michael Smith, The Sunday Timesof London reporter who broke the Downing Street Memo story, think "may ultimately be the most important part of the memo?"
He wrote in a June 26, 2005 article that it may be "the point where" Geoff Hoon, the British defence secretary, "said that the US had already begun spikes of activity to put pressure on the [Iraqi] regime" in 2002. He noted that:
Ministry of Defence figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that virtually none were used in March and April; but between May and August an average of 10 tons were dropped each month, with the RAF taking just as big a role in the spikes of activity as their US colleagues. Then in September the figure shot up again, with allied aircraft dropping 54.6 tons.Mr. Smith said, "From June 2002 until March 20,[2003] 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.If this was a covert air war, both Bush and Blair may face searching questions. In America only Congress can declare war, and it did not give the US president permission to take military action against Iraq until October 11, 2002. Blair's legal justification is said to come from UN Resolution 1441, which was not passed until November 8, 2002.
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.
"The bloggers may have found their own smoking gun," Mr. Smith said.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 10:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Why Gina and Robert Fesmire Launched Downing Street Memo.Com
Becky Bartindale of Knight Ridder Newspapers has written an interesting profile on Gina and Robert Fesmire, the Sunnyvale, California couple who "launched www.downingstreetmemo.com on a whim."
"The site, which has become a bona fide phenomenon, features secret British documents on the lead-up to the Iraq war, first leaked to the press in England," the article says, noting that, "The site has drawn 700,000 visits since going up May 11 with the goal of prodding U.S. media coverage of the documents. It has sparked political discussion around the country and quickly attracted attention from The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal."
Ms. Bartindale said "It also turned the lives of the Sunnyvale, Calif., couple upside down." See "Couple's Web site spearheaded campaign on Downing Street memo" for more.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 09:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Peter Brookes On The Downing Street Memo
On June 24, 2005, Peter Brookes, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, stated in a June 24, 2005 article in The Washington Examiner that, "You've got to ask yourself: How many times are the Bush-bashers going to throw the same infamous Downing Street memo at the wall of public opinion hoping it'll stick?"
It has already stuck, Mr. Brookes. Just look at the coverage, whether negative or positive, that it is getting around the world. And it will continue for a while despite the fact that some prominent mainstream publications and journalists refuse to give it prominence.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 09:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 22, 2005
The U.S. Anti-War Movement Can't Impeach Bush
On June 21, 2005, Virginia Rodino at Democracy Rising. US asked: "Will the U.S. Anti-War Movement Impeach Bush?" I doubt it. The left does not have the constitutional authority to do so. I think Ms. Rodino's perspective is worth analyzing.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 03:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Downing Street Memo: The Pentagon Papers Of Our Time?
BellaCiao reported June 19, 2005 that, "The so-called Downing Street memos, now seven in number, have been dismissed by some in the press as "old news," but the same could be said of the Pentagon Papers when they were published."
"As in the previous case," the publication said, "the shock value comes from their official nature, and they bring key questions about deceit and poor judgment in the run-up to the Iraq war back to the forefront for public debate."
See "British Documents: The Pentagon Papers of Our Time?" for more.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 03:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Michael Smith Transcipt Discussing The Downing Street Memo
Michael Smith, The Sunday Times of London reporter who broke the Downing Street Memo story, went online with The Washington Post on June 16, 2005, Here is a transcript of the session. It's quite revealing.
The memo suggests that the Bush administration "fixed" intelligence about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction to justify removing former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 03:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Rightwing Critics And The Downing Street Memo
Blogcritics.Org has a June 21, 2005 post headlined "Right wingers try to claim Downing Street Memo a forgery." Written by Voice 1, the post said "Some right wingers are so scared of the truth, they use one lie to cover up another lie, and so on, unfortunately, for them at least, they lie so much that their lies cannot be backed up by the facts." I recommend the article.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 03:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
African-American Democrats And The Downing Street Memo
U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) told BlackAmericaWeb.com on June 21, 2005 that, "With the Downing Street memo and the constantly increasing death toll, I think the American people realize that we have no policy for success" in Iraq.
"We in Congress must demand direction, an action plan from the president and Secretary of Defense [Rumsfeld]. And we must demand that they respond to our oversight," she told BlackAmericaWeb.com's Monica Lewis,
Ms. Lewis said Ms. "Jackson-Lee and roughly 60 other Democratic members of House have joined together to form the Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus." She noted that the caucus, "formed by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA),... includes the likes of Representatives John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, Jr., John Conyers, Cynthia McKinney, and Carolyn Kilpatrick."
According to Ms. Lewis, the caucus met June 20, 2005 "to discuss what moves they will make to apply pressure and hold Bush, Rumsfeld and others within the administration accountable."
See "Conyers, Other Black Democrats Fired Up Over Downing Street Memo" for more.
Posted by Munir Umrani at 02:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
