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What will Americans do about the Downing Street memo?

The murmurs about the Downing Street memo are growing into a louder chorus of outrage. What has been widely reported in the British press and other countries for weeks and months is just now beginning to bubble up over Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton as relevant news.

For those who don't know (and it still appears to be many), the Downing Street memo is a confidential British intelligence communication, written months before the war began, that was leaked to the Sunday Times of London.

Ostensibly, it indicates that the Iraq war/invasion was the only agenda from the start, that Saddam Hussein was no real threat to anyone, and that the intelligence (e.g. weapons of mass destruction, mobile chemical labs, etc.) was being "fixed" to support the policy.

In other words, the invasion of Iraq (which the United Nations called "illegal"), with its 1,700 dead U.S. soldiers and 100,000-plus dead Iraqis, and its $300-billion price tag, was based on fabrications and plain old-fashioned lies.

Neither the British nor American governments have denied the authenticity of the memo. Yet neither will discuss it, and this administration has yet to reply to direct requests from Congress for a response.

What will Americans do? Yawn and click the channel to watch the next American Idol? Or will we turn up the heat?

The rest of the world is watching.

We deserve to know the truth

All Americans deserve to know the truth about the Downing Street memo and related documents, but loved ones of our soldiers in Iraq especially deserve to see extensive coverage on these important documents. There is no more important question in a democracy than whether the people and their representatives have been misled about the justification for a war.

A memo drafted by constitutional attorney John Bonifaz and available at www.AfterDowningStreet.org begins: "The recent release of the Downing Street memo provides new and compelling evidence that the president of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq. If true, such conduct constitutes a High Crime under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution."

Please ask yourselves whether each item you are reporting on is important enough to take up space that should be devoted to this question.

Knowledge brings responsibility

Re: An honest man is a dangerous person,June 20.

Republican congressman Walter Jones, who had been a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, said, "I based my decision (to back the war) on certain information that has proved not to be true." Jones and two other congressmen have introduced a resolution to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by Oct. 1, 2006.

The information that proved not to be true was that there were no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attack and Saddam Hussein was no threat to us. I wish someone would show all the reruns of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and company beating the drums of war. How could they have been so wrong?

Now we have the Downing Street memo. Intelligence was fixed around policy! The Bush administration had already decided to go to war but needed a reason palatable to the public. The "certain information that has proved not to be true" was fabricated to gain public support for the already-decided-upon war. We are hearing the truth but are we listening? Knowledge of the truth makes every one of us responsible from now on.

Years from now when our children and their children ask us what we did when we discovered that all the killing, maiming and destruction done in our names was based on faulty information, what will we say?

Senator should be removed

Re: Senator draws White House ire with Guantanamo comments, June 17.

Sen. Dick Durbin should be brought up on sedition charges for his comments that equated American military personnel at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Stalinist thugs and the genocidal Pol Pot. How dare he, in a time of war, spread anti-American sentiment and hate!

Quite frankly, Mr. Durbin, I don't care if the detainees have a Koran or if they have to listen to rap music. It beats the hell out of being blindfolded and beheaded! Why don't you attack our enemies instead of our military? You are an enemy within this great country and you should be removed immediately from office!

Making a bad situation worse

Regardless how one may feel about the war in Iraq, the recent comments by Sen. Dick Durbin concerning our treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay were not only stupid, they were dangerous. To make any comparison between Gitmo and the Nazi concentration camps shows not only Durbin's total ignorance, it shows a blatant malice toward our troops that is inexcusable. By comparing Gitmo in this way, it indirectly places U.S. troops at Gitmo in the same category as the Nazi SS murderers at places like Auschwitz and Treblinka. Where is the evidence to support such an accusation? No one has died at Gitmo. Millions perished under the Nazis.

Al-Jazeera TV has widely circulated Durbin's comments to the Arab world. This type of calculated effort on the part of many Democrats, only makes a bad situation worse. This is nothing more than an attempt to trip up President Bush's policies. It is shameless politics at its worst. It places lives at risk for the sake of political gain. Sen. Durbin should be admonished and censured by the Senate without delay. Unfortunately, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have not spoken out against Durbin's comments. This, in itself, speaks volumes.

The distortions continue

Sen. Dick Durbin read an FBI report on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and commented that if we did not know it was from an FBI agent, we could assume the worst.

Sadly, these events are happening. Republicans again demonstrate their immorality. They now support a policy of torture and/or coverup of such policies.

Howard Dean speaks the truth about faux Christians and the Republican Party. He is labeled as bad.

In both instances the media support omission and distortion of facts.

We desperately need a news channel sponsored by liberals. America needs to learn the truth about all the right-wing extremist lies and fallacies that have plagued us for so long.

[Last modified June 22, 2005, 01:08:17]