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After reading an article about the Iraq war, I thought: What is taking so long? What is taking so long for the American media to quell all of the "manipulation" and actually report what is going on in the world? -snip I am a journalism student. It is refreshing to know that there are still journalists who care more about their readers than the agenda of sinister plotters bent on profiteering from an unjustified conflict while risking the young lives of U.S. soldiers. Seeking the truth, I recently came upon the Downing Street memos. These are the recorded minutes of...

I'm arguing with a bunch of liberals about their assertion that Bush concocted the links between Saddam and AQ. They, of course, continue to insist Bush linked Saddam to 9-11. now they have thrown out the contents fo the DSM. Can someone give me the Reader's digest condensed version?

Some of the most liberal members of Congress are planning to throw house parties next Saturday to focus attention on presidential adviser Karl Rove and the so-called Downing Street Memo. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., says he's organizing the events across the country "to broaden public understanding of how Karl Rove and the Bush Administration have manipulated intelligence, deceived the American people, and misled our nation into war." "Our country is slowing beginning to confront the truth about the Bush administration's deceitful rush to war in Iraq," Conyers said. July 23 marks the three-year anniversary of the meeting at No. 10...

lala_rawraw (1000+ posts) Fri Jul-15-05 12:19 PM Original message OMFG - We were hacked - ALL of our email Edited on Fri Jul-15-05 01:46 PM by Skinner Addresses were removed from the account. WTF?????????????????????? And our access denied. THEN, ADS site seems to have been hacked as well. Don't know the details of the ADS hit, but will find out. David Swanson just called to tell me and I was busy telling him. Both hit, same day. PEOPLE, this is an organized thing. EDITED BY ADMIN: To clarify, the message refers to AfterDowningStreet.org. Democratic Underground was not hacked.

The San Diego County Democratic Party Central Committee passed a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for "high crimes and misdemeanors." The committee, in a vote Tuesday, asks Congress to immediately begin impeachment proceedings based on "evidence" that the administration lied to the American people and created a false justification for going to war in Iraq. The resolution refers to the so-called Downing Street Memo – official minutes of a meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and members of the Bush administration – and "new leaks of British documents." The...

Sen. Kerry is wielding a double-edged sword By Alexander Bolton Sen. John Kerry is facing a dilemma. With an eye towards running for president again in 2008, the Massachusetts Democrat has positioned himself as one of the most pugnacious critics of the Bush administration, often aligning himself with liberal activists. But at times, his aggressive anti-Bush rhetoric risks alienating other parts of his own party. Kerry’s predicament was apparent this week as he took the lead among Democrats by calling for President Bush to fire his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, for Rove’s alleged role in revealing the identity...

I have this posted at my website, but i also wanted to float this idea here to take America's temperature, so to speak. I have been hearing so much about how Americans in general have "forgotten" the tragedy of 9/11. Rush Limbaugh has mentioned several times that we are a "visual society"--we react stronger to pictures than just words. For example, all the negative images coming out of Vietnam went against any good news from the warfront at the time. The same is happening now in Iraq: there ARE good things happening there, but not only are they NOT getting...

The D.C. Chapter of Free Republic invites all Freepers and lurkers in good standing to join us tomorrow afternoon outside the White House as we hold a patriotic counter-protest of the anti-American left.We will gather on the closed to vehicle traffic part of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Lafayette Park starting at 4:30 p.m. We will stay there through the leftists' rally in the park and peacefully counter-protest them.Details of the leftists' plans as announced by them:5:00 p.m. ET in Lafayette Square Park, in front of the White House, a large rally will support Congressman Conyers who plans...

FReepers from the DC Chapter conducted a FReep of the Downing Street Memo Rally  at Lafayette Park next to the White House on June 16. The DSM Rally was sponsored by Code Pink and Progressive Democrats of America (the outfit of William Rivers Pitt of DUmmie FUnnies fame) in an attempt to refight their crushing defeat in the last election. The leftists, including John Conyers (D-Michigan) and other members of Congress who spoke or attended, are trying to impeach President Bush by using a triple-hearsay, ambiguous memo (read great National Review article here) of a lower level British Foreign Office...

If you click on the Downing Street Memo thread,you'll see where I posted a "Eulogy for the DSM". I first want to thank all those that posted comments here and/or visited my website (link above). When I recieve responses at my website, however, I don't know if I should be flattered or not. Why?? It seems that whenever someone leaves a post at my site, it's NEGATIVE. What follows is an anonymous comment posted after the "eulogy". I was going to actually accept this person's criticism until I saw their 4th point: "You right wing revisionist historians are so transparent....

No Bounce: Bush Job Approval Unchanged by War Speech; Question on Impeachment Shows Polarization of Nation; Americans Tired of Divisiveness in Congress—Want Bi-Partisan Solutions—New Zogby Poll President Bush’s televised address to the nation produced no noticeable bounce in his approval numbers, with his job approval rating slipping a point from a week ago, to 43%, in the latest Zogby International poll. And, in a sign of continuing polarization, more than two-in-five voters (42%) say they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found the President misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq. The Zogby America...

Dearly Beloved, We have gathered here today to pay our last respects to the latest attempt of the Sore Losers to smear our President, George W. Bush. If you recall, just days before the November 2004 election, Dan Rather and his minions at the C-BS network tried to foist upon the American public "fake but accurate" documents about the Presidents service in the Air National Guard. The documents were proven to be forgeries and the attempt to take down a sitting President backfired. Recently the so-called "Downing Street Memos" have surfaced, purporting that the President "fixed" the facts to support...

Troops must stay in Iraq - Blair The UK premier was talking ahead of the UK-hosted G8 summit UK premier Tony Blair has endorsed US President George Bush's assertion that coalition troops must stay in Iraq as long as necessary to defeat terrorism.Mr Blair told the Associated Press it was "vital" the US-led coalition remained until the country stabilised. Defeating "insurgents and terrorists" there would lead to the destruction of terrorism across the globe, he said. Mr Blair argued the 11 September 2001 atrocities in the US upset the balance, raising fears of nuclear terrorism. On Tuesday Mr Bush...

Since it was first published in the British press in May, the so-called Downing Street memo has generated debate about the Bush administration's intentions of going to war. Critics of the Iraq war have seized on the document--minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior government leadership--as proof that the Bush administration was hell-bent for war even as it publicly sought to bring Saddam Hussein to heel through diplomacy. War critics have focused on a section of the document in which a British spy agency chief, identified as C, discussed a recent...

LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday the "Downing Street memos" paint a distorted picture, and he insisted that the Iraq war was not predetermined by the United States. "People say the decision was already taken. The decision was not already taken," he said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. Blair added he was "a bit astonished" at the intensive U.S. media coverage about the leaked memos, which suggested the White House viewed the war with Iraq as inevitable.

You've got to ask yourself: How many times are the Bush-bashers going to throw the same infamous Downing Street memo at the wall of public opinion hoping it'll stick? If politics is the art of transferring blame, I'm betting we haven't seen it for the last time. For those of you who have (wisely) taken the summer off from politics in favor of following the Nats or perfecting your tan, let me clue you in on "Memo-gate." Eight months before the Iraq war began in March 2003, an aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote a memo stating that...

Senator John Kerry’s office has released a copy of his letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee requesting an investigation of pre-war Iraq intelligence failures (and the Downing Street Memo) ===== June 22, 2005 The Honorable Pat Roberts, Chairman The Honorable John D. Rockefeller, IV, Vice Chairman United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence SH-211 Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller: We write concerning your committee's vital examination of pre-war Iraq intelligence failures. In particular, we urge you to accelerate to completion the work of the so-called "Phase II" effort to assess how policy makers used the intelligence...

……The administration has prevented any official inquiry into whether it hyped the case for war. But there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that it did. …….And then there's the Downing Street Memo - actually the minutes of a prime minister's meeting in July 2002 - in which the chief of British overseas intelligence briefed his colleagues about his recent trip to Washington. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam," says the memo, "through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It doesn't get much clearer than that.

The Madison chapter of Veterans for Peace is planning a series of town hall meetings to discuss the impeachment of President Bush. Retired UW Professor Bob Kimbrough hopes the meetings will spark a serious discussion on impeachment. "It's pretty much in the air now, thank goodness," he said. The state Democratic Party has called for the impeachment of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and some Democrats in Congress have broached the subject. Kimbrough, Buzz Davis and Don McKeating of Madison Veterans for Peace, Chapter 25, are organizing the events. "The purpose, since it's a...

Let’s be calm. Before we join the lynching crowd, the onus to examine this British intelligence report falls on the shoulder of responsible citizens who are not after President George W. Bush’s neck, politically or otherwise. Invectives and verbal abuse against Bush’s decision to invade Iraq based on the alleged “fixing” of intelligence report mentioned in the document is nothing but lapsus linguae if these come from polluted sources in Congress, allied Liberals or cause-oriented groups, politically driven protesting beatniks, and the profit-crazed, wayward media whose excuse for being is to sensationalize news. These anti-Bush and anti-Iraq-war champions of the...

NBC's Katie Couric and Tim Russert managed on Friday morning to cover just about everything in the news -- except Democratic Senator Dick Durbin's incendiary comments equating Guantanamo with the Nazi regime and the Soviet gulags. Couric raised with Russert how the "House introduced a resolution that would require President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq beginning next year," how "according to the latest Gallup Poll, 56 percent of Americans say now the war was not worth it, almost 60 percent say the Pentagon should pull some or all of the troops out of Iraq," how "some senior Democrats...

Articles indexed to downingstreetmemo -- Forged Iraq "Memo to Blair" exposed - AGAIN! Causing a Commotion ~ “Downing Street Memo” is old news.   Posted by OXENinFLAOn News/Activism 06/06/2005 9:24:05 AM EDT · 25 replies · 653+ views nationalreview.com | 6-6-05 | James S. Robbins   Kerry Touts Bush Impeachment Memo   Posted by kromikeOn News/Activism 06/03/2005 12:37:29 AM EDT · 223 replies · 4,687+ views NewsMax.Com ^ | 6/2/2005 | With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff   New 'Deep Throat' needed for Iraq, says Nixon rival (McGovern - Another LOSER Speaks!)   Posted by areafiftyoneOn News/Activism 06/03/2005 2:43:23 PM EDT...

A few weeks ago, at an airport in Europe, I saw Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code staring at me across the bookstore bins. I had seen it many times before and averted my gaze, but I was facing a long delay, and I suddenly thought: May as well get it over with. Well, of course I knew it would be bad. I just didn't know that it would be that bad. Never mind for now the breathless and witless style, or the mashed-paper characters, or the lazy, puerile reliance on incredible coincidence to flog the lame plot along. What if...

...Bush planted the seeds of the destruction of his Iraq policy before the war started. Salvaging the venture will require an unprecedented degree of candor and realism from a White House that was never willing to admit --even to itself-- how large an undertaking it was asking the American people to buy into. The notion that the president led the country into war through indirection or dishonesty is not the most damaging criticism of the administration. The worst possibility is that the president and his advisers believed their own propaganda. They did not prepare the American people for an arduous...

IT'S BAD enough that the Bush administration had so little international support for the Iraqi war that its ''coalition of the willing" meant the United States, Britain, and the equivalent of a child's imaginary friends. It's even worse that, as the British Downing Street memo confirms, they had so little evidence of real threats that they knew from the start that they were going to have to manufacture excuses to go to war. What's more damning still is that they effectively began this war even before the congressional vote. With congressman John Conyers holding hearings, the media are finally starting...

The Downing Street memo has a new fan — Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. — who recently said that the memo was a "stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth and a profoundly important document." The problem for Kerry, however, is that there is another document that contradicts his view, a document that the defeated Democratic presidential candidate ought to remember. No, I am not talking about the other official British documents disclosed since Kerry made that statement, although they do show just how silly it was for people to interpret the first memo — which contained meeting minutes...

As has been discussed on Free Republic earlier, Downing Street Memo Originals Destroyed -UGH!, British "reporter" Michael Smith has told Asociated Press that he copied the original on plain paper and then destroyed the originals. But click here and you see a Reuters Wire Photo Showing a "Seal" on the "copy" offered to the press. The caption reads, "A copy of the so-called 'Downing Street Memo', produced in July 2002 for Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair on the legality of the invasion of Iraq. Photo by Stephen Hird/Reuters". Did he really destroy them, type them on plain paper? Don't look...

Kerry cautious on probing `Downing Street Memo' By Noelle Straub Monday, June 20, 2005 - Updated: 10:36 AM EST WASHINGTON - Walking a tightrope on a politically charged issue, Sen. John F. Kerry vowed weeks ago to raise the controversial ``Downing Street Memo'' as an issue in Washington, but has since publicly held his tongue on the matter. Instead, Kerry has been enlisting other senators to sign onto a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee seeking answers about the memo, aides said. The memo contained minutes of a 2002 meeting in which British officials told Prime Minister Tony Blair they...

The so called Downing Street Memo - which was presumed to be authentic when Bush administration critics began touting it last month as evidence the president committed impeachable crimes - is actually a manually recreated copy - with the source of the memo now admitting he retyped the document before destroying the originals. British reporter Michael Smith, who broke the memo story in the London Times on May 1, revealed to the Associated Press over the weekend that he "he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper...

The media and the Leftists have had a field day with the Downing Street memos that they claim imply that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence on WMD in order to justify the attack on Iraq. Despite the fact that none of the memos actually say that, none of them quote any officials or any documents, and that the text of the memos show that the British government worried about the deployment of WMD by Saddam against Coalition troops, Kuwait and/or Israel, the meme continues to survive. Until tonight, however, no one questioned the authenticity of the documents provided...

Is Treason the Only Policy the Democrats have to Offer? In America today, we have universities that suppress conservative organizations and views and promote Leftist socialist groups and ideals. We have a great preponderance of university professors who are extremely Liberal, and a vast majority of whom support the Democrat party, and are intolerant of opposing views. We have a large number of Left-wing organizations organizing protest marches against the war. We have a large number of desperate Liberals stoking the fires of hatred because they feel that the nation is ignoring them and their calls for impeachment of the...

Are Downing Street memos authentic or elaborate hoax? Blogs question credibility of reporter who typed copies, destroyed originals Are the highly publicized Downing Street memos authentic government documents that show the Bush administration lied about pre-war intelligence on weapons of mass destruction? Or are they part of an elaborate hoax – akin to CBS's infamous National Guard memos on George W. Bush's military service? Many of the same blogs that successfully challenged Dan Rather's documents are now questioning whether the Downing Street memos are for real. With Times of London reporter Michael Smith admitting the memos he used in his...

CHOMPING AT THE FOOT Even if his mouth isn't open, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean finds a way to stick his foot in it. Last week, it was his contribution to a hugely embarrassing moment for the Democratic Party. which saw him involve the party in an anti-Operation Iraqi Freedom hearing on Capitol Hill and allow several individuals into party headquarters during that hearing who passed out anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda. It all started when Michigan Democrat Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and his staff decided to hold a "congressional hearing" on Capitol...

So, again we have documents with no originals? The eight memos — all labeled "secret" or "confidential" — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

The media and the Leftists have had a field day with the Downing Street memos that they claim imply that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence on WMD in order to justify the attack on Iraq. Despite the fact that none of the memos actually say that, none of them quote any officials or any documents, and that the text of the memos show that the British government worried about the deployment of WMD by Saddam against Coalition troops, Kuwait and/or Israel, the meme continues to survive. Until tonight, however, no one questioned the authenticity of the documents provided...

Repeatedly, those contending that President Bush lied us into the war in Iraq have had to face contrary evidence, stacks and stacks of it, and how have they handled this refutation of their fantasies? By ignoring it. But give them something all but irrelevant to the argument, some itsy, bitsy thing that they can misinterpret as demonstrating the rightness of their view, and notice how some of them behave. Why, they say, the final proof is here at last. I speak of the so-called Downing Street memo, the disclosed minutes of a meeting in 2002 between British Prime Minister Tony...

President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein. In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war."U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing," Ricketts says in the memo. "For Iraq, `regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush...

WASHINGTON - A handful of people at Democratic National Headquarters distributed material critical of Israel during a public forum questioning the Bush administration's Iraq policy, drawing an angry response and charges of anti-Semitism from party chairman Howard Dean on Friday. "We disavow the anti-Semitic literature, and the Democratic National Committee stands in absolute disagreement with and condemns the allegations," Dean said in a statement posted on the DNC Web site. Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, organized the forum on Thursday at the Capitol to publicize and discuss the...

It's so nice to see that even the Washington Post, which had cheered so hard for the U.S. invasion of Iraq two years ago, is finally having it up to here with the Bush administration's handling of the worsening Iraq mess. "The U.S. mission in Iraq seems to be drifting dangerously - and the president, once again, is not talking frankly to the country about the sacrifice that may be required, or where the troops and other resources for such an effort will come from," the paper's lead editorial yesterday concluded, perhaps suggesting that the president should come clean about...

A former diplomat who has criticized President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq Thursday appeared to contradict one of the main charges leveled by those who point to the "Downing Street Memo" as proof that the administration knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction but went to war with Iraq anyway. The Downing Street "Memo" or "Minutes" originated at a secret July 23, 2002 meeting, where Prime Minister Tony Blair and other top British officials discussed the situation in Iraq. Bush critics have seized on the memo as proof that the president was determined to invade Iraq...

WASHINGTON - A hearing Thursday on a secret British intelligence memo that said President Bush was committed to waging war on Iraq months before he said so publicly ended with a request for Congress to open an inquiry into whether Bush should be impeached for misleading the nation. "All we're asking is to know the truth," said John Bonifaz, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet,org. "Some of his supporters want to say it's a question of failed intelligence. If that's all it was, so be it." But if not, said Bonifaz, "then the American people and the U.S. Congress deserve to know." The...

WASHINGTON - Congress should conduct an official inquiry to determine whether President Bush intentionally misled the nation about the reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein, a senior House Democrat suggested Thursday. New York Rep. Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record) was among Democratic House members who participated in a forum to air demands that the White House provide more information about what led to the decision to go to war in Iraq. "Quite frankly, evidence that appears to be building up points to whether or not the president has deliberately misled Congress to make the most important decision a president has...

it looks like they are having this meeting in the copy machine room...

Forum Downing Street Minutes and Pre-War IntelligenceU.S. House of Representatives, Conyers, J. (D-MI)Washington, District of Columbia (United States)ID: 187209 - 06/16/2005 - 2:00 - ns Conyers, John Jr., U.S. Representative, D-MI Bonifaz, John C., Founder, National Voting Rights Institute Wilson, Joseph, Deputy Chief of Mission (1988-91), Iraq McGovern, Ray, Member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Sheehan, Cindy, Mother Rep. John Conyers, Jr., and other Democrats hold a public meeting concerning the "Downing Street Memo" and pre-war intelligence on Iraq. On May 1, 2005 a Sunday London Times article disclosed the details of a classified memo, also known as the "Downing...

Michael Smith, the reporter for the Sunday Times of London who has been fed leaked documents from the highest levels of the British government from 2002 regarding discussions about how to remove Saddam Hussein from power, today called for the impeachment of President Bush.Smith's call for impeachment came in an online discussion on The Washington Post's Website.In response to a question that noted domestic commentators believe impeachment is not realistic, Smith says, "I do think that the pressure now is such that it could go that way but only with continued pressure from us journalists and you the people. I...

Congressional liberals and anti-war activists Thursday plan to "demand the truth" regarding the Downing Street "Memo," the British government document that the critics say proves the Bush administration's "efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence" from Iraq. However, defenders of the president point out several other documents or remarks that they say contradict the British memo. The Downing Street "Memo" or "Minutes" are derived from a secret meeting held on July 23, 2002, by Prime Minister Tony Blair and other top British officials to discuss the situation in Iraq. The document was leaked to the Times of London, which...

LONDON (AP) - When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the then-U.S. national security adviser didn't want to discuss Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida. She wanted to talk about "regime change" in Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led invasion more than a year later. President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein. In one of the memos,...

I am soo sorry that I ever voted for that liar George W. Bush. He has done more harm to this country than Bill Clinton ever could. I say impeach him now.

“Tony Blair and the United States President George Bush are to hold a specially convened summit in April to finalise details of military action to overthrow Saddam Hussein.”

AS LEAKED GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS GO, the "Downing Street Memo" is pretty sexy. Not actually a memo but the official notes of a July 23, 2002, meeting in the British prime minister's office, the document reproduces the thoughts and concerns about Iraq of Tony Blair and his key advisers, including his foreign and defense secretaries, his attorney general, and "C"--code for Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service, recently returned from high-level meetings in Washington. Rarely do you find an open window on such a high-level discussion, especially on a matter that will take a country to...