From the memo
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. "
If you haven’t heard about the memo, here’s an article
I would say that the US and the world is owed some sort of explanation, as so far this document appears to be legit and it flatly contradicts the administration’s characterizations of intelligence “failures” as simply mistakes. It also put’s the whole “for the freeom of the Iraqi” people take on the war in a very cynical light.
The problem with this memo is that it is one person’s opinion. There is no smoking gun. This guy’s impression was that that was happening; that doesn’t make it true. Until there is a tape recording of Bush saying “let’s fix the intelligence around the policy of removing Sadam,” everything is just conjecture.
Well, it’s good that someone asked a high ranking Republican in a public sphere, but McCain is not in the Bush administration.
I think your standards are a little high. A smoking gun (almost funny to hear that term being bandied about in that context) would demand a heck of a lot more than a response in my opinion.
I wouldn’t call it an opinion so much as a first hand account that’s missing some details. It would have been nice to know precisely what was being fudged, but I guess that would fall outside of the scope of a memo.
From what I’ve seen I don’t think anyone is attacking the validity of the memo. This seems to be an actual summary of the interaction between the US and the UK intel. I would consider this equivalent to a credible allegation.
An allegation which the Bush admin doesn’t seem to be denying either. The letter from the 89 members of Congress assures me that the admin is fully aware of the memo and the need to deny it as well. Yet they don’t deny it. Hmmm
I just find it amusing that an official government document from the head of the British Secret Service is getting dismissed as “one person’s opinion.”
“The head of MI:6 is not credible enough. Call me when you have something from a gay escort who uses an alias and pretends to be a reporter from a nonexistent news organization – now that’s a trustworthy source!”
Nah. Why respond? The technique of the big lie is to tell a lie that people want to believe and keep repeating it come Hell or high water. With a docile media that’s afraid they won’t get tickets to the Pres’ press conferences you’re a hands down winner.
In the U.S., this story is, at best, only a “below the fold” headline on the front pages of some newspapers. Bringing the memo up would only call more attention to it. Thus, it’s best that the job of addressing the war memo be left to the right-wing radio ranters so they can dismiss and ridicule it as just another “flimsy conspiracy theory” cooked up by those “mean and irrational Bush-hating liberals in the media and Congress.”
So far as I can tell there are basically two negative responses to this.
“I don’t believe it.” This generally comes without rationalization. They just refuse to believe and if they do try to explain it, they use #2…
“The evidence isn’t strong enough.” This line of argument holds that you basically have to prove that the administration did it before the administration should even be asked to respond. Frankly this seems to imply to me that the impeachment hearings should be well under way before the president should even send out a press release on the subject.
But the point of this argument is to avoid debate rather than to assert innocence. Which is why I don’t think we really have any takers so far.
Now it would be one thing if the authenticity of the document was under question (which it is not), or if the source appeared to be unreliable (which it does not), or if the account was second hand (which it was not). If there was to be a debate, it would be most probably embarassing.
So I will pose a further question for those who hold the negative view (that Bush shouldn’t respond).
Why shouldn’t the administration respond to a credible description of wrongdoing? If this is not a credible description of wrongdoing, explain why.
I didn’t know that the Whitehouse press secretary had been asked about the memo. The response was relatively predictable. But might be worth discussing.
From the article -
I, for one, find the “circumstantial” adjective hard to swallow. The memo described a high level security meeting between the countries. I really can’t see what’s circumstantial about that. It’s like they’re trying to describe the chief of British intelligence as a member of the peanut gallery.
“The head of MI:6 is not credible enough. Call me when you have something from a gay escort who uses an alias and pretends to be a reporter from a nonexistent news organization – now that’s a trustworthy source!”
Blair has already stated that he has nothing to apologise for, that we all need to move on and it is pointless to keep discussing Iraq. :wally
So that’s all right then. :rolleyes:
Yes, but then everyone started focussing on his record of achieving value for money improvements in public services and he asked that could we go back to focussing on Iraq please…
Looks like the Republican Conspiracy To Control The Media has extended all the way to the this message board.
I’ve been scouring the web looking for a conservative response so that I could at least use that as a starting point for a debate but I can’t seem to find one. If anyone knows where one is, please post.
