Under the Radar

The Downing Street “memo” is, in actuality, the -minutes- of an official British government meeting. The document is marked “UK Eyes Only”. It is an official British government document, not meant for public consumption. It is not an opinion piece, it is not a transcript of a debate (Scott McClellan keeps referring to this old “debate”), it is not a newspaper article from some leftwing paper. It is also not an isolated document. In all, there are now 6 other documents that support the contents of the original leaked document, for a total of 7 documents (so far). This is documentary evidence. If it were not official, it would not be marked with an official government classification. I should know, in the past I have handled officially classified government documents as part of my job with the U.S. Navy. I know what classified documents are and I recognize the markings and the way they are written when I see them.

Comparable American official documents, at the National Security Council level (which would be the U.S. equivalent), have yet to be leaked. The introduction of a Congressional resolution this week calling for military withdrawal from Iraq, and plummeting public support for Bush and U.S. Iraq policies, are bound to encourage leaks from dissident voices within the White House and within the bureaucracies.

Mocking these papers as “old news” is the epitome of ignorance. The Pentagon Papers in their time were also “old news” yet their contents + the official White House Oval Office tapes forced Richard Nixon to resign. Nixon brought down Nixon.

Ironically, it is the same New York Times which bravely published the Pentagon Papers that, as recently as June 17th, is still treating the Downing Street Papers as merely fodder for “antiwar” types. This isn’t just about the antiwar folks, this is about whether the president was being truthful to the American people and the U.S. Congress. Misleading Congress is a “high crime” and is an impeachable offense. The thing is, the mainstream media can be just as much inaccurate by ignoring something as they can by writing it up and getting it wrong.

There is another sensational revelation in the reporting of Michael Smith of the Times of London, that has not been followed up on at all by major American news outlets. He wrote on May 29: “RAF Bombing Raids Tried to Goad Saddam into War.” British and American aircraft had doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war. The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that P.M. Blair argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war, and Bush had no authorization from Congress at that point either. These were not just bombing strikes to patrol the no-fly zone, these bombs were hitting targets inside Iraqi air space, strategic targets meant to weaken Iraqi defense capabilities.

While some in the press obviously feel this is “old news,” the question remains “whether the information provided to the American public at the time was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

I should think that a president lying to the American public and to Congress on a matter as serious as war is a whole lot more important than a president lying about getting laid in the White House by an intern. If this president were a Democrat, you can be damned sure impeachment proceedings would already be taking place.