'Fixing' intelligence
http://afterdowningstreet.org/
Submitted by Nathyn on Sat, 2005-06-18 23:20.
Published Saturday, June 18th on WorldNetDaily.com
By Gordon Prathers
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
By now, all members of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction ought to have fallen on their swords.
Why?
Here is the way the commissioners began their report made to President Bush just a month before the London Sunday Times published the so-called Downing Street Memo.
On the brink of war, and in front of the whole world, the United States government asserted that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, had biological weapons and mobile biological weapon production facilities, and had stockpiled and was producing chemical weapons.
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Some Good Journalism Over at MSNBC
Submitted by Nathyn on Sat, 2005-06-18 22:47.
Four days ago, MSNBC posted an article about Microsoft being "under fire" for banning the words 'freedom' and 'democracy' in China, at the government's request, despite the fact that the newsmedia is owned by Microsoft.
Today, MSNBC ran the Downing Street Memo on their front page, with millions of MSNBC viewers and Hotmail users recieving notice:
Being daring enough to challenge the Pre
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High Crimes and Misdemeanors
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-06-18 18:38.
Published on Saturday, June 18, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Ken Sanders
Under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution's impeachment clause, and the historical application thereof, leads to the inescapable conclusion that articles of impeachment should be brought against President Bush for his commission of high crimes against the United States.
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Mocking the Downing Street Memo
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-06-18 17:27.
By Robert Parry
June 18, 2005
If American progressives think they have enough media clout to make a real issue of George W. Bush’s possible impeachment over the Iraq War, they should read the account of Rep. John Conyers’s rump hearing on the Downing Street Memo that appeared in the Washington Post.
The story by political correspondent Dana Milbank drips with a sarcasm that would never be allowed for a report on, say, a conservative gathering or on a topic involving any part of the American political spectrum other than the Left.
“In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe,” Milbank wrote. “They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole think look official.”
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Relatives of some troops killed in Iraq seek hearings on Downing Street memo
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-06-18 17:24.
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Friday, June 17, 2005
WASHINGTON — Several parents of soldiers killed in Iraq visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ask for congressional hearings on the Downing Street memo, which one mother called President Bush’s “Watergate.”
Critics say the document, which contains minutes from a meeting in July 2002 between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and top aides, shows that Bush was determined to go to war with Iraq and ignored evidence that showed the country had no weapons of mass destruction.
“Military action was now seen as inevitable,” the memo reads. “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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War Criticism and Concerns Both Growing
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-06-18 17:23.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to see a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq. A general cites the need to gain more public support.
LA Times
By John Hendren and Cynthia H. Cho
Times Staff Writers
June 17, 2005
WASHINGTON — Apprehension over the war in Iraq surged Thursday as a group of lawmakers demanded that President Bush develop plans to withdraw troops and a top Pentagon official expressed concern about sagging public support for the U.S. military effort.
After a deadly increase in violence in Iraq, congressional critics of the war grew more vocal in demanding a change in policy, and antiwar activists staged a rally near the White House.
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Denver Post Editorial
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-06-18 17:19.
Downing Street memos on Iraq
DenverPost.com
Another confidential British memo has surfaced to fan fresh criticism about the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war. This time, the issue is whether the Bush administration ignored warnings to plan for the war's complicated aftermath.
The document, like another British memo - the so-called Downing Street memo that was leaked last month - echoes reports from 2002 when experts predicted a quick U.S. military victory followed by a difficult period of stabilizing Iraq. Even then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell worried that the Defense Department wasn't doing enough post-war planning.
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Justifying the Silence on Downing Street Memos
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-06-18 17:14.
By FAIR
June 17, 2005
One of the features of the newfound media interest in the Downing Street Memo is a profound defensiveness, as reporters scramble to explain why it received so little attention in the U.S. press. But the most familiar line--the memo wasn't news because it contained no "new" information--only raises troubling questions about what journalists were doing when they should have been reporting on the gulf between official White House pronouncements and actual White House intentions.
There are two important points in the Downing Street Memo, and media apologists have marshaled slightly different--though equally unconvincing--arguments as to why each did not deserve coverage. The first point is that the White House was intent on going to war long before it announced the decision to invade Iraq; "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action," the memo states, citing British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
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Conyers Hammers Milbank
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-06-18 17:12.
Dear Sirs:
I write to express my profound disappointment with Dana Milbank's June 17 report, "Democrats Play House to Rally Against the War," which purports to describe a Democratic hearing I chaired in the Capitol yesterday. In sum, the piece cherry-picks some facts, manufactures others out of whole cloth, and does a disservice to some 30 members of Congress who persevered under difficult circumstances, not of our own making, to examine a very serious subject: whether the American people were deliberately misled in the lead up to war. The fact that this was the Post's only coverage of this event makes the journalistic shortcomings in this piece even more egregious.
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Conyers Delivers Letter to White House
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-06-18 17:07.
By Joy Williams, member, AfterDowningStreet.org
On June 16th Rep. John Conyers and 122 other members of Congress presented a letter to the White House which included 5 simple yes or no questions regarding the Downing Street Memo, which were minutes from a meeting between the British Prime Minister and his top advisors -- and indicate that Bush was already committed to going to war by the summer of 2002 and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" -- meaning they made up evidence to go to war.
. These five questions were first asked on May 5th and were the following:
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http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/298
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"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." AfterDowningStreet.org is a coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups, which launched on May 26, 2005, a campaign to urge the U.S. Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. More
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/308
david@davidswanson.org
David Swanson at 202-329-7847 or Jon Schwartz at 301-928-7579.
To request an interview with Constitutional Attorney Jon Bonifaz, Professor of Political Science at Hofstra University David Michael Green, Founding Member of Gold Star Families for Peace Cindy Sheehan, or Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org David Swanson,
contact Jon Schwartz at jonrschwartz@yahoo.com
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/312
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DOWNING MEMOS REVEAL BUSH LIES
'My Brother Died For A Ruse'
Downing Street Memo - Unleashing The Resistance
Downing Street Memo - Deception & Cover-up
Nail It To The White House Door
New Memos Reveal Even More
Bush Deception On Iraq
http://www.rense.com/
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SEE:
LEAKGATE...IRAQ NO WMD REPORT W/LINKS:
HTTP://WWW.APFN.ORG/APFN/LEAKGATE.HTM
