Downing Street Memos...How Much Proof do we need?

This is the questioned asked by Kevin B. Zeese at LewRockwell.com.

The Downing Street Memo – minutes of a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair and his advisors that said the U.S. was "fixing" the intelligence to support the Iraq War – was not enough to get the mainstream U.S. media or members of Congress to take the issue seriously. Now there is Downing II, III, IV, V, VI and VII!

As the evidence mounts, the failure of the media to seriously investigate the issues is baffling. Why aren't they interviewing current and former U.S. military intelligence officials about these reports from highest levels of British government? Isn’t the media supposed to investigate and get the truth for their readers and viewers?

And, how about Congress – shouldn’t they be subpoenaing witnesses to testify under oath about pre-war intelligence gathering, the influence Bush administration had on manipulating or misstating intelligence findings and whether intelligence was gathered to report the truth or designed to support a pre-ordained war? The Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, has promised to investigate whether intelligence was manipulated by the Administration – but that promise remains unfulfilled and last week Knight-Ridder reporter Dick Polman was told it was "still on the back burner." Maybe it is time to make good on that promise.

How much more information is needed before the truth is sought and reported to the American people?

He follows up with a great summary of all seven memos which you should check out. He concludes with the following:

What do all these leaked, confidential British memos point to? The Bush Administration had decided to go to war at least one year before doing so and many months before seeking a resolution from Congress. The invasion of Iraq was illegal under international law so they tried to create legal justification through manipulation of the United Nations in order to trap Saddam into violating U.N. resolutions. This also provided the side benefit of making it look like they were seeking a peaceful resolution while at the same time putting in place the machinery for a massive U.S./U.K invasion. The case for war was weak – the link to terrorism particularly Al Qaida was poor, Iraq was no more dangerous than other ‘axis of evil’ countries, Iraq’s weapons program for nuclear, bio and chemical weapons was no greater than prior to deciding to go to war and intelligence needed to be ‘fixed’ in order to justify the war to the public and international community. Finally, these memos indicate that the U.S. planned poorly for the post-invasion occupation of Iraq, greatly underestimating how difficult this part of the military activity would be.

The British memos are certainly producing a lot of smoke – will anyone with credibility and resources do the investigation needed to show us the fire?

This should be required reading by the Washington Post who gave us this nonsense this morning.
Iraq, Then and Now

Bloggers have demanded to know why "the mainstream media" have not paid more attention to them. Though we can't speak for The Post's news department, the answer appears obvious: The memos add not a single fact to what was previously known about the administration's prewar deliberations. Not only that: They add nothing to what was publicly known in July 2002.