Downing Street Memo Redux

The Downing Street memo (click on title for link) is getting renewed attention thanks to organizations like MoveOn.org who are demanding that President Bush "must directly address the evidence in the Downing St. Memo of intelligence manipulation and public deceit in the rush to invade Iraq." This demand is in the form of a petition letter prepared by the office of Representative John Conyers.

The memo was originally released to the public on May 1, 2005 by the Sunday Times of London. The Christian Science Monitor, of all places, has a fairly comprehensive article on the matter at hand (posted back on May 17, 2005):

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0517/dailyUpdate.html

Here is part of what that CS Monitor article says:

"In a letter to President Bush released May 6, 89 Democratic members of Congress said the memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of our own administration." This move failed to gain the sort of media attention that normally elicits a quick response from the administration, which did not comment on the memo until Monday."

I haven't formed a strong opinion as to why this memo didn't garner more US news coverage back in early May, although my guess is that this wasn't much of a shock to anybody. Didn't Bob Woodward's recent book on Bush entitled "Plan of Attack" already reveal similar information? According to Woodward's account, the number one agenda item for Bush (as per Cheney) even before he was inaugurated in 2001 was "discussion about Iraq and different options."

Still, what I continue to find deplorable about the top brass of the current administration is their contempt for both Congress and the press (not to mention the Constitution, all liberals, and anything else that stands in their way). They really don't want to answer to anyone, and until the American people stand up and say otherwise they may not have to. In this week's New Yorker magazine Seymour Hersh has an excellent short piece about covering Watergate back in 1973:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050613ta_talk_hersh


Hersh ends his article with the following poignant comment:

"As memoirs by both Nixon and Kissinger show, neither man understood why the White House could not do what it wanted, at home or in Vietnam. The reason it couldn’t is, one hopes, just as valid today: they were operating in a democracy in which they were accountable to a Constitution and to a citizenry that held its leaders to a high standard of morality and integrity. That is the legacy of Watergate."

Sometimes it appears that we've learned nothing from our own history.

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