I can't wait until the Wizbang lefty commenters get on here trying to explain it away: "But.. but.. but..."

You folks are pretty loose with the facts. You don't deserve the good men and women that we have in harms way ALLEGEDLY protecting us from terrorism.

I heard Mehlman on MTP yesterday and he was orgasmic over the Iraq elections. Well, I was against war, but happy to see the Iraqi people vote - however, I understood that the mandate was to send us on our way.

Your pResident lied, many, many people have died are suffering because of these lies. By making excuses for this cabal, you bear responsibility for this crime as well.

If you and your party like democracy so much, why don't you PROVE IT by allowing Rush Holt's newest verfied voter bill come to the House Floor for debate. ?

This thing's starting to look downright coordinated at the national level. Is that you, Hillary, behind yonder curtain? And here we thought The Big Brass Alliance and After Downing Street were -- as Soros-backed MoveOn pretended to be -- just li'l ole grassroots groups of concerned citizens.

"A deliberate attempt to undermine support for a war they don't like"

The issue cuts to the heart of Presidential credibility. What Bush said very unoquivically and specifically is that a decision to go to war was not yet decided, but he would lead the USA into war ONLY as a last resort when all other options are exhausted. I REMEMBER THAT!

This memo contridicts his direct statement. It says the decision by then, was already final, and they'd "fix" the intellegence to fit the plan.

Kevin, whether the USA were 'always' at war with Iraq or not is a matter of opinion, but you cannot argue that IF we were at war all along, Bush has clearly escalated that war.

Why was that nessasary? Did these bombs really need to be dropped when we could've had a cold war instead? Remember the Cold-War? We won.

But instead Bush intentionally CHOSE to escalate the war in a very shady way behind our backs, and now nearly two thousand American lives have been lost along with about 27 thousand Iraqi lives. Did we go there to 'liberate' people right out of their lives?

Was this mess worth the $5.8 Billion a month it's costing us? Is the President's "borrow-and-spend" war plan really WORTH the debt? Is it worth Bush selling off our country to Saudi Arabia and Communist China? Just what do you think the value of our country is? If this sort of thing is acceptable to you, then you must not think our country is worth very much.

Why did we need to "fix the facts to fit the policy?"

The USA wouldn't need to "fix the facts to fit the policy," if the war were truly that much of an unavoidable 'last resort' Bush said it was.

No. If the war were truly an unavoidable last resort, the facts wouldn't have needed to be intntionally 'fixed.' The facts would've been naturally self-evident!!!!

The 145 Thousand signatures of US citizens on the Rep. John Conyers petition to the President to answer the 89 House members letter asking the president to explain the Downing Street Memo, which no one...NO ONE...has challenged the validity of.

And did you know John Bolton got a Brazilian, UN Chemical Weapons inspector FIRED because the inspector wanted to put more Chemical Weapons experts in Iraq? According to the report, Bolton threw a FIT and had the man fired. WHY? Because If there were MORE experts in Iraq, then the discovery that there was nothing there would've been revealed than much faster. Just another example of the 'facts being fixed to fit the policy.'

With all this yakkity-yak about Nixon and Watergate, I have to shout "WHO CARES?!" Have you no EYES to see this sort of thing is far dirtier than Watergate at its worst?

The paragraph starting with lying to Congress ends in midsentence, you might want to fix that.

[Note: Fixed]

"The President continues to seek a peaceful resolution. War is a last resort." --White House Press Briefing, Scott McClellan, November 12, 2002

"I want you to keep focused on what you are doing here," [...] "This war came to us, not the other way around."--Condoleeza Rice, May 15, 2005

I've not made up our mind about military action. [sic] Hopefully, this can be done peacefully...”--George W. Bush, March 6, 2003, White House Press Conference

“We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force”--George W. Bush, March 8, 2003 Radio Address

One need not be terribly concerned about the exercise of executive authority in the absence of Congressional approval to note that, if the Downing Street Memo is true, than each of the above are lies. Not lies designed to mislead Congress--lies designed to mislead us.

I don't really see any difference between this memo and what has been said by others. This memo is a British assessment of the situation in Washington. The Brits think the Americans are on a march to war. So? Big freaking deal -- that is the same assessment carried in our own media for months and months preceding the war.

Thanks for the quotes Gerald.

How about this fun exchange from JAN 6 2003?

- - - - -

Q: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said earlier today that the way he sees it, war with Iraq is less likely now than it was. Does the White House agree with that assessment?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, the President, as he said over the holidays, remains very hopeful that peace can be pursued as a result of some of the decisions Saddam Hussein has yet to make. And this is about disarmament. And that's why the inspectors are there. They're going about their jobs and they're doing their work, and the President continues to hope that war can be averted.

Q So the buildup that we're witnessing now, particularly the departure of the hospital ship Comfort today, is that posturing or is that serious?

MR. FLEISCHER: I think the President has been very serious. And hopefully, Saddam Hussein will get the message that the world community, through the United Nations, has called on Saddam Hussein to disarm, and as the President said, he will either disarm or the United States will lead a coalition to disarm him. That's a serious message. It's not a bluff. And perhaps as a result of it being such a serious message, Saddam Hussein will indeed get that message and disarm peacefully.

- - - - - -

Pfft! They already KNEW since 2002 their PLAN for military action was a GO! They knew they'd be fixing the facts to make it SEEM as if Saddam had not disarmed! They'd EVEN publically said so, previously.

- - - - - -

"Saddam has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbore. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq." - Colin Powell, Feb 2001.

"We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." - Condoleeza Rice, July 2001.

- - - - - -
These people, I tell ya. They have the nerve to call themselves 'conservative' while they blindly force through the most reckless policy decisons you can imagine. And then LIE to our faces about it the whole time.

I mean how OFFENSIVE is that??????

Well the deal is that, whether or not the public believed him, Bush said flat out that he was _not_ on a march to war: that "all options were on the table", etc., and the memo directly contradicts those statements. The deal is that, from a logical standpoint, that constitutes a lie; a breach of the public trust.

But this is just one aspect of the issues surrounding this memo, which this adminstration, after repeated redresses, still refuses to comment on.

There remains furthermore that recent intelligence made public in Britian, after the memo's release, suggests that the US began military action that was an integral part of the war plan prior to congressional authorization, namely, US and RAF bombing raids and specific targeting and destruction of Iraqi bases. Sections of the document match up with this recently released intelligence. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,2-523-1632566,00.html

Also, as mentioned above, according to John Bolton's former deputy, Bolton had orhcestrated the firing of the head of an arms-control agency (Jose Bustani) because Bustani was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors into Baghdad. The former deputy told the Associated Press that Mr. Bolton did not want that to happen because it might help defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and thereby undermine a U.S. rationale for war. Bolton had no comment. http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000946569

This also matches up with information in the document, specifically in that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy", and that the US, having no legal basis (substantiated rationale) for the war, had deliberately sought to create the impression of one - again, a violation of the public trust.

McCain wrote:

I don't really see any difference between this memo and what has been said by others. This memo is a British assessment of the situation in Washington. The Brits think the Americans are on a march to war. So? Big freaking deal -- that is the same assessment carried in our own media for months and months preceding the war.

The memo is a crucial to understanding that all the while Bush was telling us he was doing everything he could to avert war, and he'd only do it as a last resort, what was really going on in fact...to quote the memo itself is that: "Military Action was seen as inevitable because Bush wanted to remove Saddam throught military action, justified by terrorism and WMD, but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

THAT WAS NOT THE ASSESSMENT OF THE MEDIA IN 2002. NOWHERE IN THE MEDIA DID THEY SAY..."War is a policy decision! It's inevitable! We will fix the intelligence and facts around our policy decision!"

When you do something...I mean anything...do you make your decision FIRST, and then intentionally manipulate the facts later to justify your decision?

Or do you do the opposite... examine the actual facts first, and then make your decision later, based upon what the actual facts tell you?

If you are wise, you do the latter. Yet Bush did the former... knowingly... and he lied about it the whole time.

If my boss ran his buisness like that I'd QUIT! Because you know that's not the way to operate a business, it's a plan for bankruptcy and disaster! So that's not the sort of American leader I could respect, either.

"This passage needs some clarification. Maybe Rycroft or Dearlove could elaborate; by “fixed around” did they mean that intelligence was being falsified or that intelligence and information were being gathered to support the policy? There is nothing wrong with the latter — it is the purpose of the intelligence community to provide the information decision-makers need, and the marshal their resources accordingly."

I'd say Robbins passage needs a little more claification as well. Someone please tell me in what world it is appropriate to decide a course of action and THEN to go out and find the information that supports that course of action? The prupose of the intelligence community is to provide information so that the decisions-makers can make decisions BASED ON the information provided. It is not the purpose of the intelligence community to provide cover, however, dubious, for decisions already made.

Let's say you wanted to do something, say, build a house on a parcel of land at the edge of steep hill. At the outset, you decide that you don't want to build on the flat part but that you want to build on the side of the hill. Now, having decided FIRST to build the house on the side of the hill, you go about gathering up all the geological and engineering information that supports that decision. Then low and behold the hillside collapses and your left standing in a pile of rubble wishing you done your due dilligence to find other opinons and assessments. Because, as it turns out, your engineer was named Curveball and he was telling you everything he knew you wanted to hear because he and his pals had an agenda all their own. You see what happens when you decide on a plan and then gather information and facts around it you begin with an automatic filter on that colors and slants everything you see. Not only is this a bad way to do research (as any historian or highschool freshman can tell you) it makes you vulnerable to those who would manipulate you. Once they know what you want to hear, all they have to do is tell it to you. Of course if something slips thorugh, why just ignore it, becuase it doesn't "support plan." Afterall, that should be the basis for valuing intelligence information right? Whether or not it supports the plan?

Hell, Bush didn't have to manipulate intelligence, he didn't have "to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments" in any ways whatsoever. He just had to ignore what he didn't want to hear.

Which is clearly the case because once the UN inspectors were back in and they started coming up with zero he yanked them out and started his war. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Fanfuckingtastic.

The rest of Robbins piece is the same clap trap Kevin;s been trying to sell for weeks, from suddently deciding that the head of the MI-6 is just some easily excited dimwit who suggests majors decisions be made on the basis of hearsay to arguing that, well, everyone knew we were going to war anyway (even though the president himself said otherwise) or that well we would have found a good reason to go war sooner or later. Please. What a crock.

Nice try Mr Robbins,
but taking three paragraphs to say "black is actually white" must have kept you up all night.
"But the intelligence and plans were being fixed around the policy." His attempt to explain this rather blunt statement borders on absolute lunacy.
In fact DSM lends alot more credence to all those stories we heard about OSP, Office of Special Plans that Cheney was hiding away in the bowels of the Pentagon.

There is a lot of work to do here to bring the falsifications of the Bush administration to light. And it has to happen in the Senate with hearings. It will be interesting to see who steps up.

That said, any argument that suggests Bush and Co. did not "fix" the intelligence must also conceed that officials high up in the administration are incompetent.

Take the alluminum tubes claim. Cheney told us on national televisiion that these tubes were "unequivocal" evidence that Sadaam was "reconstituting his WMD program". Yet numerous people in the administration from Energy Dept. officials to CIA types to foreign intelligence organizationos had been engaged in a heated debate over what these weapons could be used for.

Either Cheney new abou this debate and fabricated or didn't know about the debate, making him incompetent.

Many of seem to over look that one paragraph that talks about Saddam using Wmd on the first day, or on Isreal or Kuwait. In your minds that is something that Saddam didn't have.

And a question, when do you think he should have started plans to go to war? I didn't say when should we go. Its two different things.

I have got more left over yellow cake from my daughter's birthday party than Saddam ever did.
Wasn't yellow cake debunked long before Bush used it in SOTU address? Yet more evidence that the admin would use whatever means necessary to push for war.

We need to be taking the offensive, not driveling out weasel words like Klinton would do. That was just embarassing -- pathetic attempts like this trying to explain away this so-called 'Downing Street Memo' are obviously not going to work. The wording is just too damning. We have to get out in front of this like we did with Rathergate.

Wisely, Rove has had Bush say absolutely nothing, confirm or deny, so we still have plenty of room to maneuver.

I bet if we dig we can find some mistress or gay chat line in this turncoat Dearlove's past, which should discredit the whole thing.

More importantly, I've already started researching the fonts and kerning involved for any leads.

I figure we can link Communist traitor George Galloway (also from the UK!) and his visit to grandstand in the US Congress to the exact same week the MSM 'discovered' the DSM.

And we can always fall back on the 'Kerry voted to authorize the war' spin, that worked pretty well before the election.

Wisely, Rove has had Bush say absolutely nothing, confirm or deny, so we still have plenty of room to maneuver.

This is not a damning indictment on Rove or Bush but on the MSM.
They have refused to cover this simply because they're scared to ask any hardball questions. In many democratic countries the President would have already been compelled to comment on this, the press would never have let him off. Sad, sad, sad.

Gee..........look at all the liberals out spewing their trash.

Do you suppose ANY of them read the full article by Robbins before trying to "educate" us?

The only thing they mostly commented on was the "fixing of facts". Oh and their definition of "lie".

Gordon,

Do you ever think that the reason the MSM doesn't carry this story to your satisfaction, or the Gannon/Guckert story or any number of stories is because it is just more liberal conspiracy theories, and not real news?

I guess even the MSM has some standards when it comes to the most outlandish of the conspiracy theories.

This post misses the point of the revelation. The issue is not one of "timing", whatever that means. This issue is that Bush told the American people in the days leading up to the war that he was still making an effort to avoid war. If the policy to that time was to "fix" the intelligence around the war, and the decision to go to war had already been made, then that is a lie. Those who think the war was worth it(for which the numbers decrease steadily)might consider that a white lie, but I think most people would consider that a lie of some significance.

Additionally, I think most reasonable people would say there is a considerable difference between reguarly but relatively minor bombing, and a full-on invasion of another country. Enforcing the no-fly zone is not the same as an actual war.

Sues
i consider the greatest faux pas of American foreign policy in my lifetime real news. I consider the lives of those dear boys and girls fighting over there real news. If they went to war based on lies and sacrificed their lives Bush is going to have hell to pay.

On a purely linguistic note, I (like James Robbins, in the article linked by Kevin) have to wonder about the use of the word "fixed" in the sentence "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Would a Brit use "fixed" in a sense that means what it might mean to an American - that is, roughly the same as "repaired"? It seems to me that word and therefore that impossible-to-interpret sentence is the cause of all the hullabaloo.

The very first time I saw that sentence, I read it to mean "established" -- but that may be due to my past in the radio direction finding business, where "to fix" means "to establish a location," or just "to locate."

What's that old quote... "two nations divided by a common language," I think.

Mr. Wolf, Bush may very well had been making every effort to avoid war. Still a prudent move would be to get "all the ducks in a row". It is much easier to call off the war than it is to have your bluff called and you got nothing.

Play cards? Your invited to our game any time.

Russ --

The meaning of the verb fix is practically irrelevant despite the fact that the unsavory meaning of the word is in common usage in Britain. Take for instance this 1999 headline from The Guardian: "There's no need to vote, the fix is in" http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,288491,00.htm

Based on my experience as a journalist, headline writers tend not to use arcane or uncommon words and phrases to put in their headlines.

At any rate, the meaning of the verb isn't the only thing supporting the reading of the sentence you are disputing. As written, the sentence asserts a sense order of events that means the policy came before the intelligence. If Dearlove meant to report something else he would have said that "The policy was being fixed around the intelligence." See the meaning of the verb is pretty much the same but the sentence is less scandalous because the sense order of the nouns (and in this example the actual order) is reversed. Try replacing fixed in the original sentence with other verbs and you'll see it doesn't change the sense order of the nouns, that the policy came before the intelligence. Of course to Robbins, that isn't a big deal. Go figure.

So George Bush was bound and determined to take out Saddam Hussein, and finish the job we should have finished in 1991 . . .

And I should be upset about this . . . why, exactly?

This whole nonsense is like backseat drivers complaining that we should have had 6,000 ships at d-day instead of 5,000, and attacked a day earlier. It is, as it always is, the liberals' preoccupation with process over substance, while contorts themselves into amazingly nuanced knots. The successful persecution of the war in Iraq is good for the middle-east and good for humanity. The rights of man are shining brightly. And some here want to quibble about who knew what and when and where and why, as if that really matters.

For those of you lacking moral clarity, lying is wrong.

For those of you lacking knowledge of constitutional law, it's an impeachable offense.

For those of you lacking understanding of the implications and ramifications of a governed populace tolerating willful deception from the executive branch of their goverment, think about it.

Hmmmm.

American: "fix" = change

British: "fix" = place

YAWN.

Hmmm.

"Would a Brit use "fixed" in a sense that means what it might mean to an American"

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=affix

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fix

"fix" is a shortened form of "affix".

And yeah this discussion bores the hell out of me. This has all been hashed out repeatedly on just about every other blog.

FIX is the same in Britain as it is here. No spin here. It's like "lie". That's the same too.

Fixed. As in, put in place around. What, that's not clear? Policy established before the information it's allegedly based on. The meaning of that sentence is DAMNED OBVIOUS, unless you're dissembling or illiterate.

Spewing trash? Pft. Ad hominem will get you nowhere. Why isn't logic a bit more common in these "arguments"?

I'm interested in the links of hearsay this memo gains every time it's reviewed. Do you guys really think that's the way the English government does business? Passing on "information" from a friend of a friend of a friend or a friend who read it in the New York Times? Right.

And it's doubtful, though Robbins suggests this, that Oil For Food could have been used as a justification for war. A justification for discontinuing Oil for Food, certainly.

This is also a bit sketchy:

Maybe Rycroft or Dearlove could elaborate; by “fixed around” did they mean that intelligence was being falsified or that intelligence and information were being gathered to support the policy? There is nothing wrong with the latter — it is the purpose of the intelligence community to provide the information decision-makers need, and the marshal their resources accordingly.

Cough. If information that reads the other way is disregarded, then there is indeed something wrong with that approach. Or if information that reads the way you want it to that isn't reliable is relied on, say.

Like that Nigeria thing that we passed the buck on.

And the allegations that the president had already decided to go to war and was thus deceiving the American people are personal opinions based on unsubstantiated impressions from unnamed sources.

Or on PNAC's website, for some of us. But I guess the Secretary of Defense writing letters to a former president asking for war isn't sufficient justification for assuming this war was a foregone conclusion?

Oh, wait, in the memo. Because every link in the British intelligence chain is apparently retarded?

One can be intellectually honest and literate and still see that 'fixed' means 'affixed' and not something like 'the fix is in', which, honestly would sound rather out of place in this memo.

You are simply reading into this memo what you want to see, and frankly only the fringe leftists seem to think this is any kind of smoking gun.

I fail to see why Bush deciding that the war was a 'foregone conclusion' is in any way controversial. The only way it was not going to be a foregone conclusion is if Saddam Hussein jumped out of character and suddenly started displaying any kind of good faith about inspections, sanctions, overflights, or a myriad of other issues, which of course never happened.