[NWPT52]Writing in The Seattle Weekly, Geov Parrish contrasts the media frenzy over last week’s revelation of Deep Throat, with the scarcity of MSM coverage of the Downing Street Memo, a document that suggests a scandal of Watergate-like proportions.
The reasons are numerous, but it adds up to a depressing reminder that Watergate, as reported in 1972
For your consideration: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/9/131250/0828
I would disagree with the analysis that Parrish makes in the Seattle Weekly about the impact the Washington Post had on Nixon and the role of the rest of US media.
I lived in Washington, DC throughout the entire Watergate period and read the Wash. Post every day. The Post was absolutely alone among US media in reporting on the Watergate scandal for more than 6 months. Remember, the break-in occurred in the summer of 1972, the election took place in November 1972. The Post’s stories started within days after the break-in and were never picked up by any other media. I would read these astounding stories every day on the front page of what was supposed to be the most influential political newspaper in America and nothing — literally nothing — ever appeared in any other print or electronic media for months on end. Talk about frustration…
If wasn’t until long after the election, I believe in the spring of 1973, when Congress began investigating Watergate and the US Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over tapes and documents that the scandal exploded into a media frenzy that led to his resignation.
Had there not been Congressional action, none of what the Post reported would have ever had any meaning, except for a footnote in history. The Nixon Administration attacked the Post daily, with far more viciousness and ferocity than even the Bush Administration or today’s GOP right-wing blogs do. True, publisher Katherine Graham and editor Ben Bradlee stuck to their guns and kept Woodward & Bernstein on the story and kept reporting more and more revelations that did lead to the Congressional investigations.
But if wasn’t for the Democrats being able to investigate, nothing would have happened and the Nixon coverup would have worked.
The media in those days was just as afraid of the Nixon White House as today’s media is afraid of the Bush White House. The only difference was that Congessional Democrats had power, and used it.
Today, they don’t have any power, and if they did, they might not use it. The petition drive by John Conyers on the Downing Street Minutes (called Memo in many quarters) might be a start. To date, nearly 300,000 people have signed that petition. It’s available on Moveon.org and other places, like Daily Kos and other Democratic blogs.
Everyone should sign it. Maybe something will happen.
I called all the MSM TV outlets to ask for more coverage and investigation on the DSM. Interestingly NBC and CBS quickly forwarded me to a ready response message board. They already knew what the request was.
I think that is a good sign that they are getting deluged with requests to cover scandal.
The fact that this has taken more than a month to begin appearing as a visible news item (i.e. not buried on page A27 as an article on British politics) is pathetic. All the more reason why any level-headed citizen with a desire to be informed should get at least a portion of their news from overseas sources.
The Guardian (Manchester, UK) is a must (www.guardian.co.uk) as is BBC’s Newsnight program, which you can get live online at 2:30 pm here. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/pro.....efault.stm). The latter would serve as an excellent lesson as to the type of deference journalists should give politicians, i.e. none.
If you’re capable with the German language, Der Spiegel is also a must (www. spiegel.de); there are some texts available in English, but one loses some of the acid that flows from their pens. These were the guys, after all, who suggested Bush’s incompetence with the spoken English language as evidence that he might be retarded. (I kid you not.)
You are more likely to find substantive investigative reporting on these sources than you are anywhere on the MSM
The news has been canceled on the Mainstream Media, but that is the opinion of Randi Rhodes(Air America). I think she is right, especially when a Runaway Bride seemed to be more important than the DSM.
Over at the SS Group, it appears Rossi won the election lawsuit. According to Stefan’s Shit Sheet (which I use as toilet paper),
“After a 129-vote lead on the third count, Gregoire cockily declared that the election had been ‘a model to the rest of the nation and the world at large.’ By the end of the trial, her lawyers showed Judge Bridges enough offsetting errors and illegal votes that they only affirmed the central claim from Rossi’s contest petition: that ‘the number of illegal votes counted, and the number of valid votes improperly rejected in this election, are so great as to render the true result of the election uncertain and likely unknowable.'”
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at 04:28 PM
By the way, Stefan, Gregoire wasn’t a party to the lawsuit and didn’t have any lawyers in Wenatchee, a minor detail that no doubt flew over your head.
Pattycakes @ 6
Did you see something I missed? He never said she had a lawyer there, however the party that she waives the banner of did, and she was to be directly affected by the decision. Did that fly over your head?
Me @ 7
Correction, he did say that however you knew what he meant or maybe not but that’s not his problem.
All tools @ 8 “Correction, he did say that however you knew what he meant or maybe not but that’s not his problem.”
Read that again. Parse it. Put it in a blender. Massage it. Do whatever you want. But that sentence makes absolutely no sense.
I expect at least the english language from the neo-cons. I am such an fool.
9
Dunno, could be the spirit of Molly Bloom here.
gotta love a Finnigan’s Wake comment!
Potted Meat
as Puddly would say “NUFF SAID”
correction: or was that was Ulysses.
I am such a LEFTIST PINHEAD. Pass the champaign and cheese.
traight poop in wa indeed!
Goldy, if it makes you happy, I hope the MSM runs with this “story”. Why? Because it’s such a non-story, it will just add to the growing irrevelance of much of MSM.
I’ve posted my opinions of this story in your previous post on this subject, and I really don’t want to repeat them. The only thing I’ll add here is that the Democrats will not make a big deal of this as it will make those same Democrats that went along with the President on Iraq look just as “bad”. They had the same intelligence available to them as the administration, had Clinton appointees (Tenet for one) telling them of the danger, so for them to point the finger at Bush and scream bloody murder would truly be the height of hypocrisy.
The only folks that can gain any mileage are those that downplayed the danger of the WMD (but let’s also be clear: those same folks weren’t saying Iraq had no WMD) and voted against the Iraq resolution. That said, they already have the liberl/left 30% of the voters, so it’s preaching to a choir that has already convinced itself long ago of “lying”.
This whole issue of “Bush lied” was played out last year in the election and decided, and the British public had its chance to decide too, so if you keep this up you will soon start sounding like Stefan and “election fraud”.
Dr. Monte Poen was of the opinion that what undid Nixon was the silent majority’s discovery that Nixon had a potty mouth.
Sorry to post again so soon, but I thought it was interesting reading Parrish’s comments from 1999 on Clinton’s impeachment:
“Perhaps most of all, Bill Clinton should be impeached–and put on war-crimes trial–for economic sanctions that have callously, brutally, and intentionally resulted in the estimated deaths of more than 1 million Iraqi civilians, including (by UN estimate) at least 750,000 children, on his watch. The US-orchestrated economic sanctions against Iraq, like our periodic bombing forays against civilian targets, are the purest form of terrorism: targeting the lives of mass numbers of citizens to achieve a political goal completely beyond their influence…Bill Clinton’s willing mass sacrifice of civilian lives violates international law, US law, the Geneva convention, and any conceivable standard of moral decency.”
And this about the bombing of Yugoslavia, also in 1999:
“Just as Iraq can never be proven to have no weapons of mass destruction, it will be impossible to verify that the last Serb soldier has left Kosovo. In the wake of Littleton, here’s all the proof we ever needed that violence is no way to resolve conflicts. It’s a shame that Clinton and other NATO leaders can’t shake their addiction to the mass murder of civilians for long enough to take their own moralizing seriously.”
I will grant this to Parrish: he has been consistent. Can you say the same?
http://www.topplebush.com/cartoons97.shtml
Jon @ 14 “This whole issue of “Bush lied†was played out last year in the election and decided”
You must be kidding! The fact that Bush Lied will never end until the last dead soldier is dragged from the desert of Iraq. Do you really think that the public will let this horrific lie pass? The man is a war criminal! He and his underlings need to be brought to justice!
Support the Troops! Send Bush to The Hague!
[Another great Democrat [communist] leader shows us how to rule the “Hillary” way!!!! Read on!!! Mugabe plays the great leader
as he bulldozes thousands of homes
HARARE – THE President arrived for the state opening of parliament in a black Rolls-Royce, medals pinned to his chest. He inspected a guard of honour of mounted police lancers. He then delivered a 35-minute speech condemning lawlessness and demanding “greater cohesion and unity” from his countrymen. At first sight this was a fine example of democracy in action, except that the country was Zimbabwe,
Donnageddon: Don’t you think most voters figured if we hadn’t found WMD by November, we would never find them, therefore, the voters had to answer the question on whether Bush lied or not? I think I know how you answered; the majority of the country felt differently.
Jon, part of the problem is that a lot of Americans believed Bush’s lies (especially in the hyper-partisan buildup to the election), and are only now realizing they were lied to.
According to a PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll in October 2004, “Despite the widely-publicized conclusions of the Duelfer report, 49% of Americans continue to believe Iraq had actual WMD (27%) or a major WMD program (22%), and 52% believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.” Bush supporters were found far more likely to have believed those lies; 75% of them believed that Iraq was providing significant support to al Qaeda, including 20% who believed that Iraq was directly involved in 9/11. (See http://www.pipa.org/us_opinion.html under “Iraq”.)
The Downing Street Memo (you’ve read it, right?) is helping people slowly realize they were misled. It’s stark proof that Bush lied to them about the supposedly imminent danger from Iraq in order to take us into war. That’s why it’s important.
It’s silly to think that Bush’s re-election was some sort of affirmation that he had not misled us or lied to us. A lot of Americans then didn’t even realize he had. That’s changing.
We covered the question of whether Bush sent American soldiers to die in Iraq based on a lie in another thread just the other day (“Memogate slowly builds momentum”). Here’s how I see it:
Bush was telling the truth when he stated that Iraq had had (and had used) WMDs in the past;
he was most likely bullshitting when he said how certain we were about the exact location of Iraq’s WMDs;
and he was lying:
· when he cast Iraq and its (supposed) WMDs as a looming, huge, imminent threat to the United States (especially after Saddam backed down and let UN inspectors back into Iraq, where they could ensure such weapons were not a threat to any country),
· when he pushed the idea that Iraq had something to do with 9/11,
· and when he said we had no choice but to invade.
Jon @ 14: You’ve forgotten what the Iraq resolution in Congress said. It gave the President the authorization to use force, which he’d said he’d use only as a last resort (in the meantime, it showed Saddam we were serious, not just saber-rattling).
President Bush took that authority and abused it, invading Iraq as a matter of choice, not necessity. Congressmen who supported the Iraq resolution can justifiably condemn Bush’s actions and the revelations of the Downing Street Memo; doing both is perfectly consistent.
David@22
Wake up the coffee is perking now David. It force was used at a last resort at Saddams insistance. For 9 years he was negotiated and talked with.
Jon,
Sorry to post again so soon, but I thought it was interesting reading Parrish’s comments from 1999 on Clinton’s impeachment:
The difference is that Clinton was working with the UN and within the UN sanctions. Bush did not. Bush ignored the UN and treated them with contempt.
That being said, there is no doubt that our entire policy towards Iraq was screwy from the start (and by the start I mean when we started working with Saddam in the 60s) Our hands are not clean when it comes to many countries, Iraq included. The UN sanctions were horrible for the vast majority of Iraqi’s and groups such as Amnesty International were saying as much YEARS before Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney decided their yearly assesments were useful to furthering their case to invade Iraq.
In the overall scheme of things Clinton was nothing more than a bit player when it comes to this type of stuff, he doesn’t have the family pedigree of war crimes that GW Bush and the Bush clan have. It’s time to take the Bush Dynasty down and expose the over 60 years of illegal covert activity perpetrated by this family.
Jon and Chuck:
Without the Bush lied mantra, donnageddon and her spawn would not have anything to hate now that the election fell their way.
Remember what the great poet Robert Forst said: “A liberal man is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel.” <-- What me Worry? How about Normal Mailer, as many people have read his works: "Left-wingers are incapable of conspiring because they are all egomaniacs." <-- Yeah, Baby! But the clincher is what Martin Luther King said about liberals: "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate." <-- Nuff SAID!!! Chuck: All the Security Council resolutions (what, 17 of them) were ignored by Saddam and now we know why Kofi Annan kissed Saddam's ass. Kofi and his son were getting rich from Saddam. Why else has the UN made such a stink and want back the UN documents leaked to Norm Coleman's senate committee? Why else would Al Franken[stein] want to run against Norm Coleman? Because Norm Coleman will expose the hypocrisy of the UN/Democratic position on Saddam through UN documents!!! Pudster
David @ 22: I’m well aware of the PIPA study you quote; I invite you to look at their methodolgy, however.
From PIPA: “Households that agree to participate in the panel are provided with free Web access and an Internet appliance, which uses a telephone line to connect to the Internet and uses the television as a monitor. In return, panel members participate in surveys three to four times a month.” Don’t you see how that could farm a lot of educated and professional people out, as the poll is survey/marketing based, not science-based? Also, as I read at another blog:
“All the study itself actually illustrates is that Bush and Kerry supporters as groups have differing world-views, and that the study designers fall in the Kerry camp. Big surprise there, eh?
Both the study questions and conclusions are written with the assumption that the POV of the authors is the only correct factual POV, and the questions are phrased to force yes/no answers to complex presumptive issues that have indeterminate and ambiguous answers in the real world. It’s classic “push polling” for “guided opinion.”
When it comes to the interpretation of results, if your answers do not fit the black/white POV of the authors, you’re divorced from reality. IOW, the conclusions were built into the poll design via base assumption and projection, not extracted from the data.
EXTREMELY notable to the academican in me is that the conclusions are entirely “framed” as a Bush-supporter misbelief study, and only those areas where the study authors believe that Bush supporters are divorced from reality receive any attention at all from the authors in the press release or the official findings. For example, Q1 asks about the economy being better, the same, or worse than a year ago, which IS a totally relevant and objective and un-ambiguous issue. It’s definitively better by any objective measure. An astounding 70% of Kerry supporters said it was worse, while 80% of Bush supporters said it was better or the same. Good luck finding this extremely relevant result mentioned in either the official findings paper or the press release. It’s mysteriously absent. This is a prime example of cherry-picking to extremes, from the first question alone.
The omission of absolutely definitive but inconvenient findings that contraindicate the “desired hypothesis” is an instant disqualifier in and of itself, as far as any scientific validity is concerned. When you combine blatant presumptive conclusion design bias, “push” methodology bias, “broad assumption” base error, and significant omissions fraud in results reporting, what conclusion are we left with? That the “study results” were pre-determined.”
But, for the sake of this argument, I’ll leave that aside and direct you to this post which shows that Kerry supporters in this poll also had a big disconnect which PIPA, I believe, intentionally downplayed: “…Yet somehow this disconnect between Kerry’s supporters and Kerry himself doesn’t merit any comment by the report’s authors. This same pattern is repeated elsewhere in the report…The PIPA results are interesting, but they’ve been carefully crafted and in some cases practically falsified in order to present a misleading view of both Kerry and his supporters. As always, caveat lector.”
As you can see, I have lots of issues with that PIPA poll.
David @ 24: “Congressmen who supported the Iraq resolution can justifiably condemn Bush’s actions and the revelations of the Downing Street Memo; doing both is perfectly consistent.
No, they can’t, and it’s not consistent. If Congress was so concerned about force being a last resort, they should have required a UN resolution before force was used. Bush delayed action several months to get the UN to act; at what point, given the resolution, was he authorized to act, in your opinion?
Looks like my post was chopped off. THat should say Robert Frost. Bad typing.
More eye-opening thoughts
Left-wingers are incapable of conspiring because they are all egomaniacs. <-- Norman Mailer You have read Mr. Mailer right? I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate. <-- Martin Luther King Jr. You do know who this guy is right? Chuck: What about 12+ resolutions ignored by Saddam and what did Kofi Annan do? Nothing! Why? Because we are finding out that his son was profiting on Oil-For-Food. The US Senate has documents leaked to Norm Coleman's senate committee about Kofi that Paul Volker should have included in his report but chose not to. . Why is Al Franken[stein] running against Norm Coleman? The UN/Democrats are afraid that more information will come out to destroy their UN/Democrat position. Pudster
Ted @ 26: “The difference is that Clinton was working with the UN and within the UN sanctions. Bush did not. Bush ignored the UN and treated them with contempt.”
Well, Parrish would disagree with you, and what does that say about Clinton’s bombing of Yugoslavia, which was not authorized by the UN?
I have a lot of respect for Parrish’s postion, even though I disagree with it, because it 1. Is consistent and 2. Didn’t change based merely on the political party holding the White House.
Cheesy Chucky @ 25
” … force was used at a last resort at Saddams insistance. For 9 years he was negotiated and talked with.”
And for 9 years he had no WMDs.
David also @ 22: You had a number of posts/points, and I wanted to make sure I try to respond to them, so my apologies for not responding to all of them the first time.
“The Downing Street Memo (you’ve read it, right?) is helping people slowly realize they were misled. It’s stark proof that Bush lied to them about the supposedly imminent danger from Iraq in order to take us into war.”
Yes, I’ve read it, but it begs these questions which, again, nobody has answered:
Why then did the British go along with the invasion? Oil? Cripes, there are a lot of easier ways to get it if that’s all you want. Make a deal with Saddam and get all the oil you want.
Why would Bush invade 18 months before the election, knowing that his “lie” would be found out by that time? I don’t know, do you?
Why not plant evidence, if you’re so evil as to lie to start a war, or at least do a way better job of CYA? Again, if you know your lie is going to be exposed, why not plant evidence?
jon@33
Don’t underestimate the insane hubris of the bush presidency, and the neocon movement in general. They really thought their followers wouldn’t catch on, I think…
Reasons for bush to go after Iraq:
1) “He tried to kill daddy!”
2) Be a wartime president greatly increases his chances of winning in 2004
3) More military presence/power in the main oil-producing area of the world.
And the real point: They respect the american people so little, they figure that they’ll never figure it out.
They really tried to push their ‘advantage’ after the election, but the pendulum is swingin’ back, and they’ve been halted on several fronts that they were so sure of…
The last quote was from Norman Mailer.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate. Martin Luther King Jr.
Why is the UN so upset that the US Senate has Oil-for-Food documents? Because the Democratic support for Kofi Annan against the war is being found out with the leaked documents to the Norm Coleman’s senate committee. We now know that Kofi’s son profitted from the Oil-for-Food program. Makes you democrats look stoopid now as France and Russia got them breaks and said “Wait, Wait” Well George waited from September 2002 to March 2003!!! Donnageddon and her spawn will call me a liar, but even the NY and LA Slimes have covered this story, so I am already vindicated and will not do their due diligence.
Donnageddon, still digesting Lee Hamilton’s take on your vaulted Ny Slimes and WA Going Postal articles? Awwwww, I’m sorry that you taste your own bile for a change instead of spewing it my way!
Jon, regarding PIPA, you have to remember that these lefties only will read lefty material and not even compare their views to our side. They then ridicule anything we use as argumentative material as being biased. See David’s take on another thread. We see the MSM lefty bias everyday in the Slimes (NY, LA, SEA) The WA Going Postal, the SF Comical, The Atlanta Urinal and Constipation, The SEA Puke-Indigestioner, The
Philthydelphia Unenquirer, ABC, NBC, MSNBS, CNN, PBS, CBS, BBC, CBC, etc.
Pudster
man I mangled some of the sentences @32, sorry!
[French Men : Socialists: Democrats [Read On!]
PARIS – Maybe it’s that mix of hot Latin blood and cool Cartesian intellect, or perhaps is just a collective guilty conscience. Whatever the cause, nearly 40 percent of French men told a recent survey that they would, science permitting, like to become pregnant.
windie @ 33: The so-called neo-cons may be evil in your book, but you really can’t believe they’re that stupid.
As far as your reasons, he already was a wartime president (with huge approval ratings), the US already had a tremendous presence in the region (peaceably, for the most part), and why would he risk losing in 2004 just to get Saddam for taking a shot at the old man? Why not wait until shortly before the election (or after, for that matter?) Don’t you think that if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, Bush would have won with even a larger margin?
Hmm…
Well, I will begin with this disclaimer issued by Goldy sometime back.
Like Nixon, this president is not above the law. If there is any credibility to the story, it will lead to the downfall of this administration (for the bloodthirsty: see my footnote below).
“If” is the word that should resonate on this subject. I say “if” for a variety of reasons to those predisposed to bashing this administration (I don’t fault anybody for bashing it, but do some independent thinking at least):
“If” this British staffer had access to all of the intelligence in the summer of ‘02, an unlikely scenario given a) the “need to know” that is crucial when disseminating sensitive intelligence while maintaining the secrecy of sources, and b) the amount and nature of the intelligence disseminated by Washington at that point and time.
“If” there are more memos that can bridge the gap between the British administration and the US divide.
“If” there is further evidence of collaborative efforts with other governments’ intelligence in order to arrive at the foregone conclusion of invading Iraq and toppling Saddam.
The British conducted an extensive investigation into whether they “sexed up” reports in order to concoct a less flimsy basis for invasion. The investigation found nothing, and the individual who was fingered as being the “informant” for the paper that reported the “sexed up” quote committed suicide after denying the quote. The writer of the story ended up in disgrace, as I recall. Wasn’t his name Gilligan or something like that? The issue was resolved after one man’s death. Yeah, go ahead and bring up the lack of WMD, paucity of evidence in their complicity with terrorists (a point I am not likely to concede based on Abu Nidal and Saddam’s $25K per Palestinian suicide bomber), and the nearly 1700 soldiers dead in the “unjust” Iraq war. We all know that now. This memo does not prove the administration knew it then.
A footnote on partisanship: During the mid ’90s, I got worked up by Rush and right wing talk radio: “The Clinton administration is the worst ever; the Left is bereft of ideas (at times, this seems to translate into the present tense); Clinton killed Vince; Whitewater; Hillarycare”…I can go on. When I finally deprogrammed back in ’97, I realized Clinton was not the ogre I had been lead by the vast right wing conspiracy to believe (though his taste in women was, um, icky). Ultimately, Clinton was impeached on grounds that were impeachable (lying under oath), but not on actions that qualified for removal from office. On the rabidity of some to bring this administration down without real evidence of Nixonian duplicity, I say calm down. “If” is a big word. Time will tell whether the “If” is Watergate or Whitewater all over again…
Jon
Well, Parrish would disagree with you, and what does that say about Clinton’s bombing of Yugoslavia, which was not authorized by the UN?
Typical “black and white” thinking there. You can’t equate the two AT ALL. Compare, yes, but they were not the same situation in anyway. First, I find it ironic that many of the same people who were ardently against Clinton taking action in Kosovo are the same people who attacked the “anti-war” types during the Iraq war as “anti-American”. The same people who stick the flag in my face and tell me to support the President during “a time of war” were bitching and moaning about Clinton going into Kosovo.
In no way shape or form does the UN hold FINAL control over what is in the US vital interests, or the interests of the world. When you consider the makeup of the Security Council and the ability of the permanent members to veto action it is clear that there are times that it might be appropriate to defy the UN. If the UN can’t agree on something that is vitally important to the US, or to humanity in general, the US can and will take a stand. In Kosovo it was the Russians who were going to veto any UN approved action at the very time that genocide was happening. Clinton stepped in and stopped an ethnic cleansing civil war, no question. It was also mainly an air war with no major ground force committment on the part of the US.
In Iraq, on the other hand, there was no immeadiate massive threat to humanity or to Iraq’s neighbors. Saddam’s mass killings had occured in the early 90s when Pres Bush I had a chance to step in (but did not). While the UN approved sanctions were sapping life from Iraq through a slow, steady “drip drip drip” rational people around the world recognized that this was not a good situation BUT also knew that a full scale invasion would make the problem worse than the status quo. In hindsight, Clinton made a very brave decision to defy the UN AND to intervene in a region where no apparent vital US interests lay. It was a courageous decision and the right decision at the time although many of the same people who protested against Bush in 2002/2003 ALSO protested against Clinton over Kosovo.
Bush made the wrong decision based upon faulty intelligence (or faked intelligence depending upon who you belive) and made a significant committment of US Forces and money without even trying to resolve the situation in any real way.
You can’t compare uncovering Iraq’s mass graves from 10 or 15 years ago to the bloodbath that the US STOPPED IN MID STRIDE in Kosovo.
jon: would afghanistan alone with our full force focused on it last that long?
They were always after Iraq
Marks @38,
Thoughtful comment. Thanks. (And I still stand by my disclaimer. One should read all media critically… especially the blogs.)
My focus on the Downing Street Memo is not to demand Bush’s immediate impeachment, but to demand further investigation. If the charges in the memo are true, Bush lied to congress, the UN, and the American people. We deserve to know the truth, and if it is found that Bush committed impeachable offenses, then he should pay the consequences.
If the memo is not true, then an investigation would exonerate him. What’s the harm in finding out?
As important as Iraq is, let’s not lose sight of the far deadlier war the Bush Administration is waging against the American people right here at home. Since taking office, more than 5 million people have lost their health insurance on his watch, raising the number of uninsured Americans from 40 million to over 45 million. Over 1600 Americans have died in 2 1/2 years of Iraq combat, but over 18,000 Americans die annually because of lack of health insurance, according to the National Academy of Sciences. http://www4.nationalacademies......enDocument While Bush tours the country seeking political support to kick the legs out from under Social Security, and a growing number of U.S. corporations go to bankruptcy court to welsh on their pension promises, the party in power says nothing and does nothing about America’s rapidly escalating health care crisis. This is a war against the middle class and working people with far deadlier consequences than Bush’s Iraq military adventure gone awry. So yes, let’s talk about the lies and blunders that led us into the Iraq quagmire; but in discussing it, let’s not forget the domestic war that Bush and the neocons are waging against Americans in their own homes.
Ted @ 39: “The same people who stick the flag in my face and tell me to support the President during “a time of war” were bitching and moaning about Clinton going into Kosovo.”
Well, I’m sorry to say that did happen, but I wasn’t one of them.
“In no way shape or form does the UN hold FINAL control over what is in the US vital interests, or the interests of the world.”
This is practically verbatim one of the arguments that Bush made to justify going to Iraq without UN approval. So who gets to make that call on when we follow the UN or not? If not the President, especially with overt permission from Congress, then whom?
Look, I didn’t say I agreed with Parrish’s condemnation of the Iraq sanctions or the boming of Yugoslavia; quite the opposite. But your condemnation of Bush is using 20/20 hindsight, so it’s easy now to say he should have gotten UN approval.
“In hindsight, Clinton made a very brave decision to defy the UN AND to intervene in a region where no apparent vital US interests lay. It was a courageous decision and the right decision at the time although many of the same people who protested against Bush in 2002/2003 ALSO protested against Clinton over Kosovo.”
You’re kind of contradicting yourself in your previous quote about US interests, but I’m quibbling, and I think you could make the argument that the Yugoslavian situation was in US interests. However, you point out an important argument: that the Iraqi situation in 2002-03 had way more implications and effects on US interests than Kosovo ever did, so who (at the time) had a better argument for going around the UN? At least Bush, again, at the time, made a self-defense arugment that Clinton couldn’t have made.
Again, I have more respect for the folks that protested Kosovo and Iraq than any folks that protested one and not the other.
Goldy:“If the memo is not true, then an investigation would exonerate him. What’s the harm in finding out?”
You’ve had bi-partisan commissions on both 9/11 and the intelligence failures of Iraq. What more do you want?
Jon @ 28: Thanks for the substantive critique of the PIPA poll! I’m impressed by your familiarity with it. I think you’re glossing over my point, though, that a lot of people (especially Bush supporters) believed untrue things Bush had said or insinuated, and are now realizing they had been misled; the Downing Street Memo is bolstering that realization. Now, about the specifics of the survey I cited…
Re: PIPA’s methodology:
Knowledge Networks (KN) does the polling for PIPA; their methodology is set out at http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp/ . They have put together a nationwide “web-enabled” panel “designed to be representative of the U.S. population.” It’s a survey population that they represent as scientific and sample from; it’s not “marketing-based” as you suggest. Yes, they provide internet access to those who don’t have it, but some “people who already had computers and Internet service were permitted to participate using their own equipment.” You suppose that their methodology would exclude educated and professional people, yet 27% of the people surveyed were college graduates (see demographic Qs at the bottom of the questionnaire).
Re: Allegedly biased questions:
You claim that “Both the study questions and conclusions are written with the assumption that the POV of the authors is the only correct factual POV . . . . It’s classic ‘push polling’ for ‘guided opinion.'”
That’s just wrong, and unfounded. “Push polling” is meant to influence opinion rather than gauge it; the most famous example is the question, “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for President if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” (Of course, McCain had not.) Push polls tend to be very short, so the questioners can contact more people; they don’t bother asking for demographic information; and the responses are discarded, not analyzed.
In contrast, the PIPA/KN poll is legitimate and appears to be free of bias. Look at the questionnaire and see for yourself. The questions (see, e.g., Q13 and Q16) were neutrally worded and gave respondents a full range of answers to choose from. There is no “framing” that would suggest a right or wrong answer.
Re: Bias in emphasizing results
The press release highlighted data that tended to put Bush supporters in a less favorable light, so you can take some legitimate issue with their choices of what to publicize; but the data are solid. (And they’re open for you to examine; nothing is hidden.)
(You note the PIPA poll showed that Kerry supporters also had misconceptions about, e.g., the economy and some of Kerry’s own positions; which is true. They just aren’t relevant to this thread about Bush taking us into war with Iraq.)
Jon @ 28 (different issue): I said @ 24 that “Congressmen who supported the Iraq resolution can justifiably condemn Bush’s actions and the revelations of the Downing Street Memo; doing both is perfectly consistent.”
You say it’s not. “If Congress was so concerned about force being a last resort, they should have required a UN resolution before force was used.”
That wouldn’t have been much of a deterrent to Saddam, would it?
“Bush delayed action several months to get the UN to act; at what point, given the resolution, was he authorized to act, in your opinion?”
He was authorized to act, but that doesn’t mean he should have invaded. The threat of force had succeeded in getting Saddam to back down; but Bush then chose to invade anyway.
And Jon @ 32:
“Why then did the British go along with the invasion?”
Strong desire to be our ally. No love lost between them and Saddam, either.
“Why would Bush invade 18 months before the election, knowing that his “lie” would be found out by that time?”
Two words: War President. Bush didn’t think there would be no WMD in Iraq, that his assertions about the danger to the U.S. would be revealed to be exaggerations, or that the Downing Street Memo would be published.
“Why not plant evidence, if you’re so evil as to lie to start a war, or at least do a way better job of CYA?”
Didn’t say he was evil. I’m sure he didn’t think his motivations were evil. But why bother to CYA when you’re going to find tons of WMD and be welcomed as liberators? No one said the administration had brilliant (even competent) post-war plans.
marks @ 38: good post. Also, points for today’s LOL moment: “[Clinton’s] taste in women was, um, icky“.
that the Iraqi situation in 2002-03 had way more implications and effects on US interests than Kosovo ever did, so who (at the time) had a better argument for going around the UN? At least Bush, again, at the time, made a self-defense arugment that Clinton couldn’t have made.
But as I knew in 2002 & 2003 the self-defense argument was bogus, Jon. I’m not using 20/20 hindsight here on this in anway, shape or form. I protested Bush in 2002 & 2003 because of many stories I had read about what was really going on in Iraq that wasn’t reported in the mainstream press. You remember Scott Ritter? The former UNSCOM inspector? He was saying all of this stuff before Bush invaded. He was also very critical of Clinton’s handling of the Iraq situation and Ritter was right about EVERY SINGLE point he made about why Bush’s case for war was dead wrong.
I agree with you on one point, Of course *IF* Iraq had been everything that Bush had claimed it to be in 2002: tied to Al-Qaida, *perhaps* involved in 9/11, just about ready to test nukes (remember, Cheney said they were 6 months away in 2002) developing drone planes that could drop chemical or nukes on the US etc etc…IF all of that had been true there is no doubt that we had a vital interest in that and defying the UN would have been a no brainer. Except it was all based upon “faulty intelligence” which at the time I knew was bullshit. This isn’t hindsight, Jon, this is what my friends and the anti-war crowd were talking about 2002 but the mainstream was not listening. No doubt Bush scared the shit out of this country and made the case that Saddam was indeed this huge threat. The difference between that and Kosovo though is that Bush’s evidence was all based upon “un-named sources” and “intelligence” that was in big dispute at the time. The debate in Kosovo wasn’t “if it was happening” but what to do about it. The killing in Kosovo was being documented by all kinds of independant sources and was never in debate.
Let me ask this, what puts our country at greater risk? Invading a country based upon false allegations that ends up inflaming radical Muslims around the world and creates an insurgency that is now growing into a full blown legitimate civil war for which we are going to be blamed for for decades? And because Bush didn’t get the UN to go along with him, the majority of the blame falls right on the US and Britain rather than being spread amongst a real coalition. And again, this is not hindsight because this is what was predicted by knowledgable non-partisan experts in the region.
Regardless of the truth of the Downing Street Memos the admitted “intelligence failures” that led us to war are justification enough in my opinion for someone to go to jail over this.
David @ 45: Well, my compliments to you on your points on PIPA poll. We may not agree, but your points are well taken.
“They have put together a nationwide “web-enabled” panel “designed to be representative of the U.S. population.””
Yes, but as they state further, the web-enabled portion is self-administrated, so you will get folks with strong opinions and/or motivations to respond, and I’m always wary of such surveys.
Sorry for more copying & pasting, but this quote articulates my thoughts much better than I could:
“The central problem of the PIPA study is that the questions were written to test support for Bush’s decisions. This automatically gives rise to bias. A different set of questions intended to embarrass Democrats would skew the results in the opposite direction; i.e., appear to make Democrats look relatively stupid.
Three distinct problems arise with the PIPA results. First, some people intentionally try to “spin” polls to make the published results favor their candidate. Second, many people take blind guesses on tests and polls. It is no surprise that, when guessing blindly, the answers of Bush’s supporters favored Bush while the answers of Bush’s critics disfavored Bush. Third, many of the survey questions were ambiguous, using such terms as “significant” and direct.” When left with wide interpretive latitude, it’s not surprising that Bush’s supporters chose to interpret questions to favor Bush.”
Speaking of ongoing killings that aren’t in debate, and choices of where we should intervene, Well, I Guess That Genocide In Sudan Must’ve Worked Itself Out On Its Own.
Jon @ 50, re: the PIPA/KN poll:
“the web-enabled portion is self-administrated, so you will get folks with strong opinions and/or motivations to respond, and I’m always wary of such surveys.”
Fair enough.
“the questions were written to test support for Bush’s decisions.”
I think that’s largely true. But testing that support, with neutral questions, does not lead to ‘automatic’ bias. If it were so, no one could conduct a poll on any subject without being dismissed as biased against (or, I suppose for) it.
“A different set of questions” would “appear to make Democrats look relatively stupid.”
You pointed out that some of the questions in this survey did just that (e.g., questions about the economy, Kerry’s support for Israel, Kyoto, etc.). There wasn’t any bias in the questioning; just discernable trends among Bush and Kerry supporters.
Ted @ 49: I understand your point, but we’ll have to agree to disagree, as nobody knew for certain what Saddam did or did not have, and who are you more likely to believe at the time, George Tenet or Scott Ritter? Granted, Ritter has been proven right, but you have to look at decisions made and what was known at the time.
Further, Ritter did a complete 180 on his views in 1998 from the run-up to war, something he hasn’t tried to explain or justify, and we know now that nothing with Iraq’s WMD capabilites changed that dramatically from 1998-2003. I’m not going to speculate; people can change their mind, but he’s never even admitted changing his position (to my knowledge), much less trying to explain his shift.
We’ll also have to see if Ritter is correct in his assertion that we’re bombing Iran this month, but that’s another topic.
David @ 52: Again, good points, but as the post I quoted said, the poll asked yes/no questions on ambiguous words, so the results were going to be suspect, and make the challenger look better.
Thanks for good give and take!
Ted, you write and descibe your position well. But you mention Scott Ritter. He also lost credibility in my eyes when he didn’t report on the children’s prison he found in 1998:”Ritter, by the way, admitted to TIME magazine on September 14, 2002 that he deliberately concealed knowledge of one of the worst abominations of Saddam’s regime—the children’s prison in Baghdad:
The prison in question was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children – toddlers up to pre-adolescents – whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I’m not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I’m waging peace.”
I am also glad that you, unlike some of your HA counterparts, are not using George Galloway because somehow he compensated financially by the Iraqi government for championing its cause while an MP. I read his “salary” was at the tune of up to £375,000/year. Oops… An this is from a far lefty newspaper in the UK, The Guardian.
Because Goldy’s bloggerator is checking for $pam and I detest $pam, my links are legit locations, but I have to split them up.
www . shmoo . com / mail / cypherpunks / apr99 / msg00224 . html I remember reading some excerpts from this New Yorker Magazine 1999 article. I suggest that everyone take a few minutes and read this. Then click the next thread link and read part 2. In Part 2 you will see that Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright had a hard-on for Scott Ritter because he was confronting the Iraqis, so they reined him in and he quit.
www . the-catbird-seat . net / Pentagon . htm: Then you have to remember is book Endgame which he wrote in 1999, which he tells how the Clinton Administration hindered his attempts to inspect in Iraq.
So tell me what made him turn? Scott Ritter admitted that he had accepted $400,000 in funding from an Iraqi-American businessman named Shakir al-Khafaji. Ritter used the money to visit Baghdad and film a documentary purporting to tell the true story of the weapons inspections (which in his telling were corrupted by sinister American manipulation). He also kept over forty thousand for himself – – I guess that’s the price for integrity.
Shakir al-Khafaji do you all remember him? He went to Iraq with Jim McDimwitt. But Scott Ritter received $400,000 from the Saddam henchman, just a wee bit more than the McDimwitt, wouldn’t that explain the switch in his prerogatives? I now know McDimwitt is really stoopid only accepting $5000.
Wow, I just remembered my Newsmax account where Hans Blix said Saddam got some WMDs: www . newsmax . com / archives / articles /2003 / 1 / 16 / 103624 . shtml
But David I refer you to this article and see how I held my fingers on this for a while but it’s time to unleash the truth on many fronts:
www . newsmax . com / archives / articles / 2003 / 1 / 30 / 171355 . shtml
I have more ammunition for our side Chuck and Jon. Yes I am more coarse in my discussions because I rub shoulders with donnageddon and her spawn. It’s hard swimming in the opposite direction when bile and manure is freely flowing the other way!
Pudster
Goldy @41
You may be right. I would point out that we wasted how much on Whitewater? The Whitewater deal and some of the other items investigated by Starr seemed to be quite slimy on the surface, yet we ended up with a slime of a different sort.
I honestly do think that between the MSM and the positions Democrats hold on the Senate Intelligence Committee and other areas of oversight, this can be brought to light. What Kennedy and Conyers are doing is playing to their (your) base. Were I to hear (at a minimum) Olympia Snowe and some other liberal Republicans calling for an investigation, perhaps I would change my mind. The memo as it stands seems more than a bit like a hunting expedition by people who hold a grudge.
But David I refer you to this article and see how I held my fingers on this for a while but it’s time to unleash the truth on many fronts:
www . newsmax . com / archives / articles / 2003 / 1 / 30 / 171355 . shtml
If that article is all you have, you should be too embarrassed to present that as evidence of anything. The links in that article are barely tenuous. When you compare that to the lengths that the Reagan Administration went in order to enable Saddam and the Iraqis (and the Iranians and other sketchy characters around the globe) to arm themselves with far more dangerous weapons, that’s a joke.
Were I to hear (at a minimum) Olympia Snowe and some other liberal Republicans calling for an investigation, perhaps I would change my mind. The memo as it stands seems more than a bit like a hunting expedition by people who hold a grudge.
This memo clearly demonstrates that this administration was lying to us repeatedly about its approach. Why does that matter? Mainly because if the administration were concerned with facts, Congress would not have given authorization for the Iraq War (and both Republicans and Democrats would have opposed it). The administration lied in order to win that vote and to take us into Iraq.
In addition to that, if it turns out that the administration was actively trying to prevent inspectors from going to Iraq, lest they begin to discover how little of a threat Saddam’s regime really was to us, they will be in an even bigger hole. It’s taken us too long to start getting upset about being lied to here. We’re all poorer and much less safe because of this administration’s actions. That should matter.
thehim @57
The administration lied in order to win that vote and to take us into Iraq.
Your argument is predicated on the questionable value of a British memo. I refer you to what I wrote @38. So far we have been shown a memo by an obscure government foreign policy guy in Britain dated July ’02. Your preconceived notion boils down to “If we say it often enough, it must be true” and to prove it, here is the single shred of evidence we have.
As you said, slightly modified:
If that
articlememo is all you have, you should be too embarrassed to present that as evidence of anything.I am unwilling to defend this administration for being stupid, because stupidity is as indefensible as ignorance of the law. At the same time, a single memo does not make the case for an investigation.
The truth will come out if something is there, not because you simply want it to be true.
The “enemy” isn’t communists liberals and socialists anymore. It’s “domestic terrorists”. Trust me . I know about these things.Who could be a domestic terrorist? Anyone who threatens to disrupt the status quo.
I saw Colin Powell on the Jon Stewart Show, and he completely disregarded the memo as “junk.” It appeared that Jon Stewart was taken aback because he assumed that since Colin Powell was no longer a part of the Bush administration he might offer some hints that all the blather about Bush is correct.
I read the memo and see no “smoking gun.” You all have the MSM in your hands, if there was any thing about this memo that raised their quills, we would be hearing about it over and over again.
Don’t feed me this crap that the MSM is in the hands of the right, because that is crap. You know, they didn’t publish all the crap about Clinton that we (Clinton haters) believed as true, and there was a lot of it.
So as soon as the MSM starts talking about Vince Foster, Tyson Foods, Cocaine, all the Women that were allegedly raped, a certain dead commerce department secretary, I would also expect them to talk about the Downing Street Memo.
Maybe, just maybe, the MSM is a little more “fair” than either side gives them credit for because they don’t fall for all the crap that we do.
Have a Great Day!
What am I saying in my comments that stops them from getting posted when I post them?
“Dr. Monte Poen was of the opinion that what undid Nixon was the silent majority’s discovery that Nixon had a potty mouth.”
He was right, Headless. Nixon stood as one thing to be revealed as another.
Patience. The tsunami that will drown GWB grows even now. The economy has been on it’s face for so long it’s comfortable lying that way. The Dow has hardly budged this year. Pillar industries falter while the world’s energy supply teeters on the brink of collapse and our little Nero fiddles.
This war is expensive, and there is no end in sight. We are at best holding our own and the effort is tying down the entire discretionary strength of the US army. One “real” international crisis and the shrub is screwed. When this adventure leaves us incapable of meeting a real threat he will be revealed as a bungling generalissimo.
And scandal builds again around the Republican edifice. Delay, Bush: Is there an honest Republican in Texas? Or anywhere else? We don’t have any here in the “other” Washington.
Americans are getting tired of this mess. Congress and the administration enjoy singularly low popularity. Congress needs s scapegoat, or in this case a scapelephant.
We’ll see articles of impeachment within a year.
bf says: “Don’t feed me this crap that the MSM is in the hands of the right, because that is crap.”
It’s not that the MSM is in the hands of the right (that’s what the conservative news media are for); the MSM is conservative, but in a different way. They’re mostly corporate businesses now, owned by stockholders and/or wealthy families with a conservative editorial perspective, and also somewhat beholden to other corporations (in the form of big advertisers). Add that to traditional news biases like wanting to scoop competitors with sensational stories, and then put the MSM in an environment of media-savvy publicity professionals, spinmeisters and prepared press releases, and MSM news coverage starts falling into a certain pattern (which certainly isn’t “liberal”).
As far as the fact that “they didn’t publish all the crap about Clinton that we (Clinton haters) believed as true,” that’s because most of that “crap” wasn’t true. (The allegations got published when they came out, though, because they were usually pretty sensational. They just didn’t have much to them.)
In contrast, the Downing Street Memo is certainly (verifiably) true, i.e. an authentic document; the problem is that it’s not “breaking” news (nobody can get a scoop with it) and it’s not terribly sensational (no blood, sex, financial corruption or dramatic power struggle). The D.S.M. could be politically powerful, but there’s no hook like a Presidential election that would make it jump to the front of current political news coverage. So it hasn’t gotten much traction in the MSM…that’s partly a reflection of the “conservatism” of the mainstream news media.
P.S.: you get points for honesty about being a Clinton hater.
Reply 62
I cant disagree with you more on the impeachment of Bush. It just wont happen in this day and age. The bar is set to high and the right wing media will shoot holes in the DSM.. If we were in the 80s or ealier when all we had was the leftist media you would have a good chance.
If anyone reads any posts from that dispicable, lying, piece of shit Pudster “Wounded Knee” tell him I’ve responded to his post on the Shiavo Autopsy thread @ 269.
Thanks,
GBS