Bradenton, FL Newspaper: The Downing Street Memo is the 2,000 Lb Elephant in the Room That Won't Go Away
Story here, it starts off with:
Why is the American public so apathetic about the Downing Street Memo?Again, thanks to Buzzflash for the pointer to this.
A nation that just a few years ago was obsessed with fudging over sexual trysts by one president seems unconcerned about evidence of lying by another to justify a war that has cost the lives of more than 1,700 American service members, killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
Like a 2,000-pound elephant in the room that everyone tries to ignore, the Downing Street Memo will stay until it is acknowledged and dealt with. It will not go away without a thorough congressional investigation.
What is the Downing Street Memo? It is a summary by an aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair of talks between Britain's intelligence chief and American officials in Washington in July 2002 regarding the situation in Iraq. The document, classified as top secret, was leaked to a British newspaper last month during Britain's national election campaign. It was a factor in Blair's party's loss of seats in Parliament. But in this country it has stirred barely a ripple of interest except among liberal commentators whose audience is relatively small and non-activist.
The meeting was held almost seven months before the initiation of the war in Iraq in March 2003. The memo deals with the planning by American officials that went into the decision to go to war. Compared to previous discussions between the British intelligence official and his American counterparts, "There was a perceptible shift in attitude" at this meeting, the memo states. "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. . ."
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