This is as it should be.
Kinsley points out that, as recorded in the memo, an official identified as "C," or Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's foreign intelligence service, "offered no specifics, or none that made it into the memo. Nor does the memo assert that actual decision-makers told him they were fixing the facts. Although the prose is not exactly crystalline, it seems to be saying only that 'Washington' had reached that conclusion."
Sullivan is even less impressed, arguing that "[all] the memo shows is one individual's take on what was going on in Washington." He might not have noticed that, according to Knight Ridder's Walcott and Strobel, "a former senior U.S. official [, speaking on condition of anonymity,] called it 'an absolutely accurate description of what transpired' during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington."
While both are correct, even if Sullivan is misleadingly so, they both miss the point. That's unfortunate, because both are highly intelligent, perceptive men whom I admire, and both could do much to advance the story.
What might be better termed the "Downing Street Box Set" of documents (steadily moving up the political charts) is more suggestive than conclusive. It provides a glimpse into the thought processes of an ally on the road to war and it shows some of the information we gave it along the way. Because of this, it gives the American public and the rest of the world something to which we are rarely privy: a glimpse into the thought processes of the White House, from the point of view of an ally's officials who have no vested interest in clouding the truth.
The officials who wrote the Downing Street documents are not former Bush administration employees seeking revenge for getting demoted or fired. And yet what they say is of a curious piece with what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and Bush ghost-writer Mickey Herskowitz said about Bush and his administrations' desire to "take out Saddam." Never mind the plans for Iraqi oil, the interviews with candidates for Iraqi Leader, the general plan for "cutting off the head" in Iraq and the meetings with oil executives that, as reported in Harper's and on BBC Newsnight, promptly followed Bush's first inauguration and were widely unreported in the US media.
Those underwhelmed by the Downing Street Memo point out also that it tells us nothing new. Few, unfortunately, have commented on the other documents, which are even more revealing and flesh out what the original leaked memo said. They're right, though: The original memo told us what we already knew, if we had been keeping up with the story and not drinking the right-wing koolaid along with the administration. As Michael Kinsley said on June 12, "Of course, if 'intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,' rather than vice versa, that is pretty good evidence of Bush's intentions, as well as a scandal in its own right. And we know now that this was true. Fixing intelligence and facts to fit a desired policy is the Bush II governing style, especially concerning the Iraq war...."
Unfortunately, those who get their news from major cable news outlets—the vast majority of Americans—would likely not know that.
Which is exactly what the administration wants. And this is why the Downing Street Memo and its siblings are so important: They raise again the question that was buried before the election. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was supposed to investigate and report on how the administration used the intelligence it got and what it might have done to ensure that it got only the intelligence that it wanted. We never got that report. We were told it would come after the election. And after the election, we were told it was on the back-burner; there were more pressing concerns for the committee to address.
As Senator Pat Roberts, committee chairman, said on NBC's Meet the Press, when asked about the "Phase Two" report: "I'm more than happy to finish this, and I want to finish it, but we have other things that we need to do.... I don't know what that accomplishes over the long term. I'm perfectly willing to do it, and that's what we agreed to do, and that door is still open...so we will get it done, but it seems to me that we ought to put it in some priority of order, and after we do get it done I think everybody's going to scratch their head and say, 'OK, well, that's fine. You know, let's go to the real issue.'"
That is the real issue. It always has been. Maybe that's why ombudsmen from the New York Times and The Washington Post were unhappy about the lack of coverage. NPR's Daniel Schorr called the Downing Street Memo "the undercovered story of the year" when he reported on it on May 22. In the noxious, fact-averse environment we live in, it's imperative to our republic that the American public know how and why we went to war. Only then can we know whether the thousands of dead and wounded, and the creation of ever more jihadists and Baathist rebels—regardless of whether Iraq becomes a functioning democracy—was worth it.
Related leaked British documents supporting and fleshing out the Downing Street Memo:
- The Cabinet Office briefing paper
- Six short documents dated just before Blair's April visit with Bush, the meeting that the Downing Street meeting minutes are about.
- Newest DSM-ish Docs Verified
- Even More Documents
- Downing Street Memo: But Wait, There's More!
- Whither the Downing Street Memo
- He Didn't Get the Memo
- Downing Syndrome
- Downing Street Memories
- When the Levee Breaks
- NY Downing Street Review of Books
- Questions for Scott McClellan
- The Washington Press Corpse: Beginning the Autopsy
- Sam Kinison on the Downing Street Memo
- Goading Saddam into War
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