The Fox Challenge on Downing Street Memo

While the corporate media has been all but mum on the Downing Street Memo Shakespeare's Sister reports that FOX News has broken the silence. After a surprisingly "Fair and Balanced" run down they all but challenge the anti-war blogosphere to keep it alive. So you won't have to soil your monitor here is the Fox story:

WASHINGTON — A British government memo that critics say proves the Bush administration manipulated evidence about weapons of mass destruction in order to carry out a plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein (search) has received little attention in the mainstream media, frustrating opponents of the Iraq war.

The "Downing Street Memo" — first published by The Sunday Times of London on May 1 — summarizes a high-level meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair (search) and his senior national security team on July 23, 2002, months before the March 2003 coalition invasion of Iraq.

The memo suggests that British intelligence analysts were concerned that the Bush administration was marching to war on wobbly evidence that Saddam posed a serious threat to the world.

In the memo, written by top Blair aide Matthew Rycroft , Foreign Secretary Jack Straw indicated in the meeting that it "seemed clear" Bush had already decided to take military action.

"But the case was thin," reads the memo on Straw's impressions. "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

The memo also paraphrased former head of the British Secret Intelligence Services, Richard Dearlove, fresh from meetings in the United States. The memo said Dearlove believed "military action was now seen as inevitable."

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," the memo reads. "But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy," according to Dearlove's impressions.

"The NSC (National Security Council) had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

The memo, which received sporadic reporting in major newspapers in the United States throughout May, has sparked an outcry from more than 88 Democratic members of Congress who have signed two letters to President Bush demanding a response.

Led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the signatories are mostly representatives who opposed the war in Iraq and make up the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Conyers says the mainstream media have ignored the story and let President Bush off the hook. He noted that liberal blogs and alternative media have been keeping the story alive. "But these voices are too few and too diffuse to overcome the blatant biases of our cable channels and the negligence and neglect of our major newspapers," Conyers said in a recent statement.

They also said that the White House has not denied the authenticity but said no response was required.