RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events "It's not about oil or Iraq..."

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Chant said:
I heard something about Christina Aguil...something was being played 24/7 in the prison speakers to keep some of the prisoners in guantanamo awake.
If that isn't torture, then I don't know what is...

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Why the Mainstream Media Is Catching On

Internet Bloggers Push Downing Street Memo Onto the News Agenda

By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005; 12:20 PM

The Downing Street Memo continues to spread in American political discussion despite efforts to dismiss its significance.

The DSM story, as the top-secret British document it is known on the Internet, has legs because it really 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.

Michael Smith, ace reporter for the Sunday Times, continues to lead the journalistic pack on the story, again demonstrating that there is more news in the British official record of war preparations. Smith reported last weekend that the British Foreign Office had concluded in early 2002 that stepped-up U.S. and British attacks on Iraq in the so-called no-fly zone violated international law. Smith's story was based on a "confidential" document entitled "Iraq: Legal Background" that was attached to the original DSM which was presented to senior British officials in July 2002.

The original memo reported that British defence secretary Geoff Hoon said that "the US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime" by attacking Iraqi installations starting in May 2002.

The "Legal Background" document shows that the British Foreign Office concluded in March 2002 such attacks could only be legally justified by self-defense, imminent threat or humanitarian crisis as defined by a United Nations resolution.

"The increased attacks on Iraqi installations, which senior US officers admitted were designed to 'degrade' Iraqi air defences, began six months before the UN passed resolution 1441, which the allies claim authorised military action," Smith wrote.

Thomas Wagner, an Associated Press reporter in London, advanced the DSM story when he reported that there was not one but a series of eight British memos "that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein."

"In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts asks whether Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war," Wagner wrote in a story picked up by the Times of India, the Winnepeg Sun and Xinhua, the Chinese news service.

"US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing," Ricketts said in the memo. "For Iraq, 'regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."

Univision.com, Web site of the international Spanish-language TV network with a big U.S. audience, also picked up the story.

"What is surprising," said Washington correspondent Jorge Ramos Avalos, is "how little attention [the memo] has received in some of the most important news media in the United States despite its being an official document that contradicts the North American version of the beginning of the war."

"Taken together, these papers amount to an indictment of the way the British and American peoples were led to war," says columnist Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian.

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Some in the American mainstream media, or MSM as bloggers call it, dispute the Downing Street memo offers anything new that would change public understanding of the decision to go to war in Iraq.

"The memos add not a single fact to what was previously known about the administration's prewar deliberations," declared the editorial page of The Washington Post last week. " Hearsay ," said the Rocky Mountain News. And radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has suggested, without evidence, the documents may be forged. (In fact, The British government has not challenged the authenticity of any of the documents cited in recent news reports.)

But an increasing number of news editors are recognizing the newsworthiness of the DSM story. Newsday , the New York tabloid, picked up the AP story. The Houston Chronicle published DSM excerpts this week. So did the San Francisco Chronicle. The editors of the Detroit Free Press say the DSM story is "too significant to be dismissed as simply old news -- as the White House would like -- or left to historians."

These aren't the big-name national news organizations that bloggers call the MSM. But nor are they partisan liberal organs inclined to buy into fact-free theories. The interest of such regional media mainstays demonstrates how the Internet has transformed the news business.

Thousands of bloggers now do the sort of sifting and weighing and disseminating of information that was formerly the exclusive province of a relatively small group of media professionals concentrated in the East Coast. The growing DSM coverage, said the BBC this week, is a "bloggers' victory."

News editors can read the DSM documents and the original Times of London stories themselves. They might be persuaded by the reporting of The Post's Dana Milbank who portrayed Rep. John Conyers's DSM hearings on Capitol Hill last week as an excursion into the "land of make-believe". But with a click of the mouse they can go to the coverage of the same event in the Guardian of London and see the DSM story described as "tantamount to the first word of tapes in the Nixon White House during the Watergate scandal."

The point is not that either account has a monopoly on truth, but now there is another force that can help put a story on the news agenda.

Thanks to the global reach of the Internet, the two-month-old scoop of a London daily continues to live in the American political debate and diverse areas of the media landscape.

Mary Specht provided research for this column.

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wannabuyamonkey said:

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Chant said:
I heard something about Christina Aguil...something was being played 24/7 in the prison speakers to keep some of the prisoners in guantanamo awake.
If that isn't torture, then I don't know what is...

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Wow that's WORSE than a Nazi death camp!

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June 23, 2005

COMMENTARY

The Real News in the Downing Street Memos

By Michael Smith
Michael Smith writes on defense issues for the Sunday Times of London.


It is now nine months since I obtained the first of the "Downing Street memos," thrust into my hand by someone who asked me to meet him in a quiet watering hole in London for what I imagined would just be a friendly drink.

At the time, I was defense correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, and a staunch supporter of the decision to oust Saddam Hussein. The source was a friend. He'd given me a few stories before but nothing nearly as interesting as this.

The six leaked documents I took away with me that night were to change completely my opinion of the decision to go to war and the honesty of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.

They focused on the period leading up to the Crawford, Texas, summit between Blair and Bush in early April 2002, and were most striking for the way in which British officials warned the prime minister, with remarkable prescience, what a mess post-war Iraq would become. Even by the cynical standards of realpolitik, the decision to overrule this expert advice seemed to be criminal.

The second batch of leaks arrived in the middle of this year's British general election, by which time I was writing for a different newspaper, the Sunday Times. These documents, which came from a different source, related to a crucial meeting of Blair's war Cabinet on July 23, 2002. The timing of the leak was significant, with Blair clearly in electoral difficulties because of an unpopular war.

I did not then regard the now-infamous memo — the one that includes the minutes of the July 23 meeting — as the most important. My main article focused on the separate briefing paper for those taking part, prepared beforehand by Cabinet Office experts.

It said that Blair agreed at Crawford that "the UK would support military action to bring about regime change." Because this was illegal, the officials noted, it was "necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action."

But Downing Street had a "clever" plan that it hoped would trap Hussein into giving the allies the excuse they needed to go to war. It would persuade the U.N. Security Council to give the Iraqi leader an ultimatum to let in the weapons inspectors.

Although Blair and Bush still insist the decision to go to the U.N. was about averting war, one memo states that it was, in fact, about "wrong-footing" Hussein into giving them a legal justification for war.

British officials hoped the ultimatum could be framed in words that would be so unacceptable to Hussein that he would reject it outright. But they were far from certain this would work, so there was also a Plan B.

American media coverage of the Downing Street memo has largely focused on the assertion by Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British foreign intelligence, that war was seen as inevitable in Washington, where "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It quotes British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that "the U.S. had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime." This we now realize was Plan B.

Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the conflict.

British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that although virtually none were used in March and April, an average of 10 tons a month were dropped between May and August.

But these initial "spikes of activity" didn't have the desired effect. The Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the excuse Bush and Blair needed. So at the end of August, the allies dramatically intensified the bombing into what was effectively the initial air war.

The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied aircraft shot up to 54.6 tons in September alone, with the increased rates continuing into 2003.

In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress approved military action against Iraq.

The way in which the intelligence was "fixed" to justify war is old news.

The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress.

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Chant said:

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wannabuyamonkey said:

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Chant said:
I heard something about Christina Aguil...something was being played 24/7 in the prison speakers to keep some of the prisoners in guantanamo awake.
If that isn't torture, then I don't know what is...

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Wow that's WORSE than a Nazi death camp!

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When I heard it, a cold shiver went down my spine.

The radio show host also said that it was a fate he didn't wish on his worst enemies.

Even terrorists are too good for such treatment

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Cheney Says Downing Street Memo Is Wrong
Fri Jun 24 2005 09:43:30 ET

Vice President Dick Cheney was asked on CNN about the 'Downing Street memo' which said the Bush Administration had decided to go to war with Iraq and the intelligence would be fixed around that policy.

Asked if he disputes the memo's claim, Cheney said, "Of course. The memo was written sometime prior to when we actually got involved in Iraq.

"And remember what happened after the supposed memo was written. We went to the United Nations. We got a unanimous vote out of the Security Council for a resolution calling on Saddam Hussein to come clean and comply with the UN Security Council resolution. We did everything we could to resolve this without having to use military force. We gave him one last chance even, and asked him to step down before we launched military operations.

"The memo is just wrong. In fact, the president of the United States took advantage of every possibility to try to resolve this without having to use military force. It wasn't possible in this case. I am convinced we did absolutely the right thing. I am convinced that history will bear that out."

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wannabuyamonkey said:

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Chant said:

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wannabuyamonkey said:

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Chant said:
I heard something about Christina Aguil...something was being played 24/7 in the prison speakers to keep some of the prisoners in guantanamo awake.
If that isn't torture, then I don't know what is...

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Wow that's WORSE than a Nazi death camp!

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When I heard it, a cold shiver went down my spine.

The radio show host also said that it was a fate he didn't wish on his worst enemies.

Even terrorists are too good for such treatment

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It's a funny stance for the sake of humor, but in reallity I think I read in a book that the Nazis did worse things to the Jews.

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Captain Sammitch said:
Oh, but humiliation is so much worse than gas chambers and cremation furnaces! Haven't you heard?

Buncha bitchtard™ candyasses.

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Bill Clinton said: I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky

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the G-man said:
Admitting something happened is not the same as admitting it was encouraged or condoned.

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the G-man said:
Admitting something happened is not the same as admitting it was encouraged or condoned.

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Chant said:

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Bill Clinton said: I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky

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r3x29yz4a said:

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Chant said:

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Bill Clinton said: I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky

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but is 3rd base sex?

seriously, I'd rather a man lie about having an affair than a man lie about reasons to go to war.

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Chant said:
what I meant was that clinton lied about having sex, and the bush administration lied about torture at gitmo

it's a metaphor (sp?)

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Chant said:
what I meant was that clinton lied about having sex, and the bush administration lied about torture at gitmo

it's a metaphor (sp?)

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r3x29yz4a said:
Did you know during WWII Germans were more willing to surrender to us because we had a good reputation for treating POWs humanely in WWI?
These tortues could still be an issue in 20 years.

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• eliminate Saddam's genocide of his own people (again: Saddam killed one million of his own people, out the surviving 25 million in Iraq).
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• Bush also acted, against stifling bureaucratic forces, to eliminate Saddam's proven pursuit of WMD ( chemical, bilogical and nuclear ).
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• And whether or not WMD's were in Iraq at the time of the March 2003 invasion, Saddam Hussein was unquestionably (according to the David Kay report) in "material breach" of the U.N. ban of Iraq pursuing WMD's. Even though WMD's were not in production in Iraq, Saddam was poised to create WMD's when U.N. sanctions would have been lifted.
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• Sanctions were not working against Iraq from 1991-2003, because nations such as France, Russia and Germany were violating sanctions to trade oil with Iraq.
  Precisely the nations that obstructed U.N. participation in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
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• Saddam was also active in the training and funding of Islamic terrorism throughout the middle east.
  Saddam gave a check for $ 25,000 in public ceremonies to the family of every Palestinian suicide bomber.
  And otherwise has provided training and funding for terrorist organizations in the region.
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• A terrorist who gave intelligence to the U.S. said that he trained in an Iraqi camp as a hijacker, inside Saddam's Iraq, in the grounded hull of a plane.
  Raising speculation that Saddam may have trained some of the 9-11 hijackers.

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AMERICAN RESOLVE IN IRAQ





Bad news hit Abu Musab al Zarqawi on June 28.

Most Americans, it seems, want to keep U.S. forces in Iraq until civil order is restored, which 62 percent believe won't happen for several years.
A significant majority even want to increase the size of the U.S. presence or keep it about the same.

With the Iraq war in its third year -- and with America having been in a state of war since October 2001 -- this new Washington Post-ABC poll is an encouraging indication about the patience and resolve of the American people.

The past few weeks have seen politicians and pundits cherry- picking whichever bad poll seems to serve their political ends.
And they can easily do it again with this one.

For example, the poll found that most Americans do not believe the Bush administration's claims that the insurgency is losing.
In fact, what a majority of Americans (53 percent) do believe, according to the poll, is that the power of the insurgency is staying about the same (and 22 percent say it's weaker).

Critics may also point to the finding that a bare majority of Americans (51 percent) consider the Iraq war to be a mistake, even though the very same poll found that 52 percent believe it has contributed to the long-term safety of the United States (a 5-point increase since early June).

Every single one of these findings can top the headline of a newspaper, only to leave readers with a distorted view of what's really going on.

Pollster Gerry Daly, who runs the Web site dalythoughts.com, makes an important observation regarding how phrasing a question can yield different results.
He compares a recent Gallup poll, which found that a majority of Americans (51 percent) believe the United States should set a timetable for removing troops from Iraq, to the Post-ABC poll, which found that 58 percent of Americans believe we should keep our forces there until civil order is restored.

Either can be used to support a particular side of the debate, but what do they actually say about the American people?

Mr. Daly thinks the public has yet to form a coherent opinion of the question of troop pullout and that the "political battle is still winnable for either side."
That sounds about right.

It's important to note, however, that the Post-ABC poll included the phrase "even if [keeping U.S. forces in Iraq] means continued U.S. military casualties."
That's essentially the heart of the matter, and 60 percent of Americans are still committed to victory.

Progress in Iraq will continue to wax and wane, as we rightly mourn each new casualty. But, underneath it all, Americans seem prepared to see the war to a successful conclusion.

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I just finished reading the decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

One thing I did find interesting in the opinion that I don’t think anyone has mentioned was the importance the court placed on the joint resolution passed by Congress in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, which authorized the President:

"to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, of persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided” the attacks and recognized the President’s “authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States."

The Court then goes on to state:

…the joint resolution "went as far toward a declaration of war as it might, and as far or further than Congress went in the Civil War, the Philippine Insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion, the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Panama, the Gulf War, and numerous other conflicts."

The Court mentioned the resolution is the context that Hamdan claimed that Bush violated the separation of powers, which the court rejected. But at the same time the Court rejected Hamdan’s appeal, wasn’t it also rejecting the "illegal war" myth of the far left?

By citing in their decision that the post 9/11 joint resolution "went as far toward a declaration of war as it might, and as far or further than" many other wars in our nations past, the Court validated the legal standing of the Global War on Terror. In so doing, doesn’t it therefore invalidate the myth perpetrated by the far left that President Bush was fighting an "illegal war?"

Seems like it to me, but I’m open to other interpretations.

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the G-man said:
Even if you assume that to be true, that does not mean the act of congress was illegal. And it was the congressional resolution that created the authority the far left says did not exist.

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1. From 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades.
2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994.
3. The detainee admitted he was a member of the Taliban.
4. The detainee pledged allegiance to the supreme leader of the Taliban to help them take over all of Afghanistan.
5. The Taliban issued the detainee a Kalishnikov rifle in November 2000.
6. The detainee worked in a Taliban ammo and arms storage arsenal in Mazar-Es-Sharif organizing weapons and ammunition.
7. The detainee willingly associated with al Qaida members.
8. The detainee was a member of al Qaida.
9. An assistant to Usama Bin Ladin paid the detainee on three separate occasions between 1995 and 1997.
10. The detainee stayed at the al Farouq camp in Darwanta, Afghanistan, where he received 1,000 Rupees to continue his travels.
11. From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
12. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars.
13. Detainee was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Khudzar, Pakistan, in July 2002.

...beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset.

...the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

...Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television.

...a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

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klinton said:
The war violeted international law, as well as UN decrees.

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George H.W. Bush said c/ 1998:
While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.

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Dick Cheney said :
I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein [in 1991] we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force .... then we'd have had to put another government in its place .... it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq

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PJP said:
The Oil for Food scandal would have kept France and Russia from ever giving UN approval.

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the G-man said:

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klinton said:
The war violeted international law, as well as UN decrees.

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wrong again. Under the terms of the UN "cease fire," set out following the first war, Iraq was required to submit to various inspections, etc. Under the terms of the UN "cease fire," if Iraq failed to comply the United States could resume the war at any time.

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r3x29yz4a said:

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PJP said:
The Oil for Food scandal would have kept France and Russia from ever giving UN approval.

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So, from now on the American way is to do an end run around established laws because we won't like the way a vote turns out?

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PJP said:
I just think in this situation the UN was corrupted beyond salvation.

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klinton said:

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PJP said:
I just think in this situation the UN was corrupted beyond salvation.

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You won't even consider the idea that perhaps it's your administration that's corrupt?

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PJP said:

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klinton said:

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PJP said:
I just think in this situation the UN was corrupted beyond salvation.

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You won't even consider the idea that perhaps it's your administration that's corrupt?

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I would. I personally have stopped trusting all politicians.

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