Downing Street Memos make the front page

It would appear that the pressure being applied by AfterDowningStreet.org and The Big Brass Alliance is having an impact. The Associated Press has decided that the Downing Street Memos are indeed news and Thomas Wanger has a story this morning. After kind of admitting they had dropped the ball last week the Portland Oregonian has placed the AP story on the front page of the print edition this Sunday.

Memos show British fretting over Iraq war

LONDON (AP) — When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the then-U.S. national security adviser didn't want to discuss Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida. She wanted to talk about "regime change" in Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led invasion more than a year later.

President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street 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 openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war.

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

I'm not going to do anymore copy and paste as only thing that is new is the fact that it was written and is making to the front page of many newspapers. Why did it take a month and a half to get this story to the front page? I'm glad that it finally is but it is a sad day when the corporate media has to be forced to print the news.