Posted on 06/02/2005 1:02:56 PM PDT by areafiftyone
Dear Mr. President:
We the undersigned write because of our concern regarding recent disclosures of a Downing Street Memo in the London Times, comprising the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers. These minutes indicate that the United States and Great Britain agreed, by the summer of 2002, to attack Iraq, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action, and that U.S. officials were deliberately manipulating intelligence to justify the war.
Among other things, the British government document quotes a high-ranking British official as stating that by July, 2002, Bush had made up his mind to take military action. Yet, a month later, you stated you were still willing to "look at all options" and that there was "no timetable" for war. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, flatly stated that "[t]he president has made no such determination that we should go to war with Iraq."
In addition, the origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction remain a serious and lingering question about the lead up to the war. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of a "massive intelligence failure," in other words a mistake, or the result of intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case for war. The memo appears to resolve that debate as well, quoting the head of British intelligence as indicating that in the United States "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
As a result of these concerns, we would ask that you respond to the following questions:
1)Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?
These are the same questions 89 Members of Congress, led by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., submitted to you on May 5, 2005. As citizens and taxpayers, we believe it is imperative that our people be able to trust our government and our commander in chief when you make representations and statements regarding our nation engaging in war. As a result, we would ask that you publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
I agree.
Mr. Conyers, of course, has nothing else to do other than to write long screeds that castigate W and his administration in the most useless way. In hindsight, it appears that W was dishonest about WMD. He provides support for a "lie" moniker by continuing to insist that there are.
Mr. Conyers (and others of his ilk) are doing nothing but wasting tax payers money and hoping to grab one second of (apparently) very badly needed attention.
Conyers spends too much of his Tax Payer Time giving interviews to NON-NEWS ANTI-AMERICAN ANTI-BUSH websites like Raw Story and reading love e-mails from DUers!
Most of the websites have reprinted the same thing that The Times Online did. Some have put it in PDF format to look authentic. I can't tell which is and which is not.
Dear Mr. Conyers,
I have Valerie Plame looking into all of this right now and will provide you an answer in 527 days.
Sincerely,
W.
The left just shows again it is ideolgically bankrupt. This is the first salvo in the much anticipated and much predicted "impeach Bush" fight they intend to wage. Having no ideas to advance or anything to offer other than the word "no" where else could they go? Do they really see the President's approval numbers as a sign that the election didn't count? That this issue Bush vis-a-vis Iraq was not presented front and center during the election for the voters to decide upon? Once again the dems show contempt for the electorate.
Moreover, the dems willing accomplices in the MSM sure have been hard at work drumming up the Watergate/60's nostalgia. It is no accident that the MSM has hit the revealing of Deep Throat story so hard. You can bet your boots that they will treat this memo as the next Watergate. You can count the seconds on an egg timer before someone at MSNB.S., CNNB.S., AB.S., NB.S., etc. will be asking the question: "What did the President know and when did he know it?"
There are several problem for the MSM and the dems. First off, the MSM has lost its monopoly. Secondly, the dems don't control congress. In addition, the dems STILL have the problem they had during the election when they made the "Bush lied and people died" charge. John Kerry et. al. saw the same intel as Bush, before Bush, and based on that called for and voted for military action against Iraq.
I want to know, what did John Kerry and the democrats know and when did they know it?
They have sent the Downing Street Memo to all the media outlets - not many have taken the bait.
Oh, but now we have the air thick with memories of the glory days of Watergate, when two super hero journalists took a story that nobody was interested in and pursued it eventually bringing down a President!!!! You can bet your arse that now that those glory days have been recalled someone in the MSM will pick this up and run with it all the way to the goal line.
Of course, there is one Rather interesting thing that could be giving them pause and/or holding them back. Can this memo be authenticated.
When the document was published, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair denied that anything in the memo demonstrated misconduct and said that it added little to what was already known about how British policy on Iraq developed.
What a joke....
Bump for later.
And you can bet whoever 'leaked' this document, if it is even real, will be given hero status.
What, may I ask, is the problem with two powerful national leaders planning strategy before they go to their respective congresses or parliaments for authority?
Is Bush supposed to approach the Senate without any forethought as to what he wants to do? I suppose in sKerry's world any President would have to come to the Senate, explain the problem and ask for ideas and suggestions. It's certainly how sKerry would approach any issue, except he'd only listen to RATS.
Maybe what really frosts John Effin's tators is that Bush truly did have a PLAN!
Conyer's a DORK!
Two bloggers discussing this on C-SPAN now.
Another case of fake, but accurate?
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