Home > What will Americans do about the Downing Street memo?

What will Americans do about the Downing Street memo?

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 23 June 2005
7 comments

Wars and conflicts International USA UK

The murmurs about the Downing Street memo are growing into a louder chorus of outrage. What has been widely reported in the British press and other countries for weeks and months is just now beginning to bubble up over Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton as relevant news.

For those who don’t know (and it still appears to be many), the Downing Street memo is a confidential British intelligence communication, written months before the war began, that was leaked to the Sunday Times of London.

Ostensibly, it indicates that the Iraq war/invasion was the only agenda from the start, that Saddam Hussein was no real threat to anyone, and that the intelligence (e.g. weapons of mass destruction, mobile chemical labs, etc.) was being "fixed" to support the policy.

In other words, the invasion of Iraq (which the United Nations called "illegal"), with its 1,700 dead U.S. soldiers and 100,000-plus dead Iraqis, and its $300-billion price tag, was based on fabrications and plain old-fashioned lies.

Neither the British nor American governments have denied the authenticity of the memo. Yet neither will discuss it, and this administration has yet to reply to direct requests from Congress for a response.

What will Americans do? Yawn and click the channel to watch the next American Idol? Or will we turn up the heat?

The rest of the world is watching.

— Tom Staley, St. Petersburg
We deserve to know the truth

All Americans deserve to know the truth about the Downing Street memo and related documents, but loved ones of our soldiers in Iraq especially deserve to see extensive coverage on these important documents. There is no more important question in a democracy than whether the people and their representatives have been misled about the justification for a war.

A memo drafted by constitutional attorney John Bonifaz and available at www.AfterDowningStreet.org begins: "The recent release of the Downing Street memo provides new and compelling evidence that the president of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq. If true, such conduct constitutes a High Crime under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution."

Please ask yourselves whether each item you are reporting on is important enough to take up space that should be devoted to this question.

— Pamela Haengel, St. Petersburg
Knowledge brings responsibility

Re: An honest man is a dangerous person,June 20.

Republican congressman Walter Jones, who had been a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, said, "I based my decision (to back the war) on certain information that has proved not to be true." Jones and two other congressmen have introduced a resolution to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by Oct. 1, 2006.

The information that proved not to be true was that there were no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attack and Saddam Hussein was no threat to us. I wish someone would show all the reruns of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and company beating the drums of war. How could they have been so wrong?

Now we have the Downing Street memo. Intelligence was fixed around policy! The Bush administration had already decided to go to war but needed a reason palatable to the public. The "certain information that has proved not to be true" was fabricated to gain public support for the already-decided-upon war. We are hearing the truth but are we listening? Knowledge of the truth makes every one of us responsible from now on.

Years from now when our children and their children ask us what we did when we discovered that all the killing, maiming and destruction done in our names was based on faulty information, what will we say?

— Debbie Terhune, Treasure Island

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/06/22/O...

Forum posts

  • Look at history and you will see that the richest nations with the most influential banking relationships are the ones who have predesposed their actions to domination over other people for the sake of taking psychologcial control of indiginous people using false religions, economic systems, and mostly the FEAR of their MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Money is backed by voilence and that is because they live in fear and the control they need to overcome their psychotic paranoid delusions is control of the situations and the actions of the people using VOILENCE against anything that WILL NOT SUBMIT to THEIR SICK MENTAL IGNORANCE which is the reason that they use voilence to interact with the beings of the worlds. They are self deluded and we NEED to take down the corporations and their money!!

    7b peace out. Destroy money. Create peace. Live Love. Accept People as they are!

    Remeber this our success will be based on our Psychologcial Collective Mind Set and our Actions!!! We can do it!
    Take down the corporations and their money systems of financial slavery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@#!#!@#!@#!@#!@#!@#!@#!@#

    • Please learn to spell, and stop using capital letters inappropriately to SHOUT!

    • It is quite apparent that the vast majority of Americans don’t really care about politics, the War, the President and his penchant for lies and abuse of power. Living in America, I see it everyday. Most of the news outlets that would cover such material such as PBS have also come under fire. PBS covered the DSM last week but approached it with extreme skepticism, using terms like "so-called" and "supposed smoking gun." Our media is too heavily influenced by corporations and lobbyists to report news such as this. So it is left up the internet, bloggers and the few journalists who still respect the American public and thier right to know what is going on in America. Already you have right wing talk show hosts saying that DSM is fake with no evidence to support their claim (i.e. Rush Limbaugh). It is rather sad that the American people would pass up the opportunity to learn the truth about a War that 2/3 of the country does not approve of. Instead, we want to hear about the lost boy scout (He had at least 3 hours on TV yesterday).

  • In yet another one of Bush’s own recent "Bushisms", he said:

    "See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

    Now, looking at what the Bush administration views as being "the truth", it’s frightening to think of what else we could be led by the nose into believing if Americans don’t wake up from their fog of celebrity antics and Missing White Girl "news" items.

    Keep us fat and happy, pump us full of brainless TV shows, and they basically have a populace that will allow anything...even lies.

    We can’t allow this to happen.

    My one hope is that since this memo is so closely tied with the ever deteriorating opinion on the war, and since parents are realizing that their kids could be the next to be sent to die in Iraq, this whole issue doesn’t die out like so many other issues (Bush’s defection from the TANG, male prostitute posing as White House journalist, etc.) have.

    Maybe....hopefully...people aren’t willing to continue sacrificing their children on the altar of George W Bush and his buddies.

  • I am an American living in California. I have talked to everyone that I know and chatted with people I don’t know. NOT ONE of them has heard of the Downing Street Memo. NOT ONE. Also the general attitutude is that if it were important it would be in the mainstream newspapers and mainstream TV.
    I am college educated , as are a lot of my friends ,so one would think that these people would have some inkling of the world around them. They don’t.

    My oldest daughter , who only hears about these things from me, said that the people she works with know nothing about any memos from Britain either. When I asked her to get online and look into it, she said ,"Mmom , I don’t have time. I work, I have a family to care for," and every spare moment of her time is taken up by her teenage daughter.
    I bring up my personal case because I think it is representative of the reason that Americans haven’t been more responsive to the leaked British memos.

    Our mainstream media is completely controlled by our government/corporations (they are one in the same) and people are kept so busy and so inundated by senseless celebrity stories and sensational trivia that they can’t pick out what is important. I don’t know the answer to this enormous problem , so I just keep writing my government representatives and newspapers etc. to try to get people to pay attention.

    Melissa

  • Here is what some Americans are doing-using our rights to speak out and educate others. http://prissypatriot.blogspot.com

    • Americans DO NOT want to know about another Bushco lie. They all but stuff cotton in their ears at the mention of another lie from Bush. They are so tired of all of the Bush lies that they are doing their best to yet again ignore the whole thing. Lost boy scouts, missing floosies, Ophra.....anything but another lie from Bushco. With the Iraqis calling Kinda Sleezy Rice the "Vampire" and trying to survive with no water, electricity, and the daily threat to life and limb the war over there is becoming increasingly intolerable. Their people know the truth and they believe nothing from their appointed government. Americans too do not believe anything from their government, but it is much easier for us to ignore the whole thing since we are not suffering anything except lie fatigue our relief is in t.v. unreality shows that help keep our minds from having to think about the truth.