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The Washington Post and the Downing Street memo
By Joseph Kay and Barry Grey
22 June 2005
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On June 16, Representative John Conyers, the ranking Democrat
on the House Judiciary Committee, held a hearing
in the Capitol on what has become known as the Downing Street
memo.
The memo consists of minutes of a British cabinet
meeting held in July 2002 in which the chief of Britains
intelligence service MI6 reported on his recent discussions with
Bush administration officials in Washington. The intelligence
head, Sir Richard Dearlove, said that in Washington war was
now seen as inevitable and that intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam Hussein
through military action, justified by the conjunction of
terrorism and WMD.
The document, labeled secret and strictly personal,
first came to light in the May 1 issue of the British Sunday
Times. It ignited a political firestorm in Britain and played
a significant role in the May 5 election, fueling anti-war sentiment
and contributing to a sharp reduction in Prime Minister Tony Blairs
parliamentary majority.
The enormous publicity given the memo in Britain stood in the
sharpest contrast to the virtual silence it evoked in the American
mediaa silence for which there is no innocent explanation.
The mainstream media made a calculated political decision
to bury the memo and keep the American people in the dark.
The memo provides irrefutable evidence, from the highest levels
of the British state, that the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was
launched on the basis of lies concocted to justify a predetermined
policy. Among the lies were the repeated assurances of Bush and
other top US government officials in the months and weeks preceding
the war that no decision had been made to go to war and the US
was exhaustively pursuing all peaceful alternatives.
It would seem that a senior congressman holding a hearing on
such a documentmore than two years after the US invasion,
with US troop deaths topping 1,700, tens of thousands of Iraqis
killed, some $200 billion already expended on the war and occupation,
and the primary pretext for the war, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,
exposed as a fictionwould be considered the minimum, if
long-delayed, response in a democracy. All the more so under conditions
where a raft of opinion polls show that a large majority of the
US population is now opposed to the war.
But the Washington Post, the capitals leading
liberal newspaper, not only relegated Conyerss
hearing to its inside pages, it published a sneering and derogatory
account that did not seek to conceal the newspapers fury
over the congressmans attempt to break through the wall
of silence on the memo.
The World Socialist Web Site is no political supporter
of Conyers, a Democratic politician who has worked for decades
to maintain the subordination of American workers to the two-party
system. Nevertheless, his treatment at the hands of the Post
is quite extraordinary. The newspaper casts Conyers, one of
the most senior members of Congress, as a buffoon, in order to
denigrate the anti-war and anti-Bush sentiments expressed by the
participants at his hearing.
To underline its attitude to both the hearing and the Downing
Street memo itself, the Post published its account in its
June 17 Washington Sketch columna feature usually
devoted to lighthearted commentary on the peccadilloes and curiosities
of political life in the nations capital. Written by veteran
Post journalist Dana Milbank, the column was headlined
Democrats Play House to Rally Against the War.
The derisive headline captured the flavor of the text. Conyers
and a number of other House Democrats, Milbank wrote, took
a trip to the land of make-believe. The dress-up game
looked realistic enough, he continued, for two dozen
more Democrats to come downstairs and play along. The hearty
band of playmates indulged themselves, according to Milbank,
in a fantasy.
Milbank found it particularly uproarious that Conyers was forced
to hold the hearing in a small room in the basement of the Capitol,
and that he lacked the power to issue subpoenas: ...subpoena
power and other perks of a real committee are but a fantasy unless
Democrats can regain the majority in the House, he chortled.
As Conyers subsequently pointed out in a letter to the Post,
Despite the fact that a number of other suitable rooms were
available in the Capitol and House office buildings, Republicans
declined my request for each and every one of them. Conyers
added that the Republican leadership in Congress took other measures
to derail the hearing, including the scheduling of an almost
unprecedented number of 11 consecutive floor votes, making it
next to impossible for most Members to participate in the first
hour and one half of the hearing.
Such anti-democratic practices by a majority party determined
to deny any minority rights and block any discussion of the administrations
war policies are evidently of no concern to Milbank and his superiors
at the Post. On the contrary, they seem to find it amusing
that such methods are used to silence anti-war sentiment and suppress
public discussion of the British memo.
Milbank continued: But thats only one of the obstacles
theyre up against as they try to convince America that the
Downing Street Memo is important. In making
the case that the memo is of no importance, Milbank introduced
as exhibit one: A search of the congressional record yesterday
found that of the 535 members of Congress, only oneConyershad
mentioned the memo on the floor of either chamber. House Democratic
leaders did not join in Conyerss session, and Senate Democrats,
who have the power to hold such events in real committee rooms,
have not troubled themselves.
That such an argument should even be adduced to prove
the insignificance of the memo bespeaks not the political import
of the memo, but the miserable level of what passes for journalism
in todays mainstream American press. The virtual
silence of the Democrats on the memo is an indictment of the Democratic
Party. If anything, it proves the opposite of Milbanks cynical
assertion. The conspiracy of silence speaks to the enormously
damaging and explosive political implications of the memo not
only for the Bush administration, but also for the Democratic
Party, which has fully backed the Iraq war.
Milbank attempted to further discredit the hearing by associating
it with anti-Semitism. He cited the testimony of one witness,
Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, who, in Milbanks
words, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq
for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration neocons
so the United States and Israel could dominate that part
of the world. Whatever McGoverns political
agenda might be, there are no grounds, simply on the basis of
this summation of Washingtons real war aims, to brand him
an anti-Semite.
Milbank then employed the tactic of the political amalgam to
bolster his anti-Semitic smear, citing flyers suggesting
Israeli involvement in 9/11 that were handed out to people gathered
at Democratic headquarters to watch the Conyers hearing on CSPAN.
There was one obstacle to explaining the Downing Street memo
to the American people that Milbank chose not to mention: the
refusal of the Washington Post and the rest of the US media
to give the story the extensive and prominent coverage it merits.
The unstated political agenda behind Milbanks June 17
piece was spelled out more openly in a Post editorial published
two days earlier, entitled Iraq, Then and Now. In
that commentary, the Post resorted to a combination of
absurdities and outright lies to dismiss the significance of the
Downing Street memo.
The editors declared that the original memo, together with
a subsequent memo made public earlier this month, add not
a single fact to what was previously known about the administrations
prewar deliberations. Not only that: They add nothing new to what
was publicly known in July 2002.
Really? The fact that intelligence was being fixed
to provide a pretext for war is something everyone knew? And it
was publicly known in July 2002eight months
before the invasion?
Here the Post seems to be confusing what it knew
with what was known by the public at large. Certainly the Post
did nothing to blow the whistle on what constitutes one of
the most monstrous violations of democratic rights in US history!
The Post editorial continued: It was argued even
then, and has since become conventional wisdom, that Mr. Bush,
Vice President Cheney and other administration spokesmen exaggerated
the threat from Iraq to justify the elimination of a noxious regime.
Exaggerated? Here the choice of words is exquisitely cynical
and dishonest. The US weapons inspectors who combed Iraq after
the invasion did not find 20,000 liters of anthrax instead of
the 30,000 alleged by Bush and his co-conspirators. They did not
find 10,000, or 1,000, or one. They found, in round numbers, zero
weapons of mass destruction!
This is not exaggeration. It is fabricationon
a massive scale, and for the filthy purpose of launching an unprovoked
war of conquest.
The Post went on to state that the memos provide
no information that would alter the conclusions of multiple independent
investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, which were that
US and British intelligence agencies genuinely believed Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction and that they were not led to that
judgment by the Bush administration.
More lies! Every one of these multiple independent investigations
were government-organized whitewashessomething that is well
understood by many millions in the US and around the world.
No pressure from the Bush administration on the intelligence
agencies? What about Vice President Dick Cheneys numerous
visits to CIA headquarters, where, according to documented accounts,
he attempted to strong-arm analysts into altering their assessments
of Iraqi WMD in order to scare the American people and make a
stronger case for war?
What about the Pentagons infamous Office of Special Plans,
which was set up to bypass the CIA and other intelligence agencies
and publicize bogus reports of Iraqi chemical, biological and
nuclear programs that were supplied by Ahmed Chalabi, a paid agent
of the US government?
What prompts the Post to publish such drivel? There
is, in the first instance, the broad consensus within the American
political and media establishment in support of the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, and the general policy of militarism and US global hegemony
being pursued by the Bush administration.
There is, as well, a considerable element of self-interest.
The Post has reason to fear the Downing Street memo, because
it is an indictment not only of the Bush administration, but also
the governments accomplices in the media, who promoted uncritically
the administrations lies and war propaganda.
But there is something elsenamely, fear. The Posts
rabid response to the Downing Street memo reflects mounting concern,
even panic, within American ruling circles over the growth of
popular opposition to the war.
This is an adventure to which the entire ruling elite is committed,
and in which both parties and the whole media establishment are
implicated. The opinion polls, the disastrous fall-off in military
recruitment, the military and political quagmire in Iraq itself,
the increasingly fragile and untenable financial situationtaken
together they point to the emergence of enormous political shocks
and social upheavals within the US.
Interestingly, Milbank, in his column, called Conyerss
hearing a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war.
It was, as far as Conyers and other Democratic politicians who
took part were concerned, nothing of the kind. They did not raise
the I word. But others who testified, including the
mother of a solider killed in Iraq, are calling for Bushs
impeachment.
Will the sclerotic two-party system be able to withstand such
convulsions? Will a movement of protest against war and social
reaction assume anti-capitalist and revolutionary forms? These
are the questions that plague the more thoughtful elements within
the ruling elite.
It is a measure of their crisis that they can for the present
respond only with more lies, combined with attempts to defame
and intimidate. Other measures are being prepared, from the promotion
of left-talking demagogues to divert discontent into safe channels
to the use of state violence and terror.
In the meantime, the Washington Post will continue to
grind out its dishonest and absurd rationales for a criminal war,
and do its best to conceal the truth from the American people.
See Also:
Bush faces growing opposition to Iraq
war
[18 June 2005]
Wall Street Journal
alibis for Nazi-style crimes in Iraq
[25 May 2005]
Washington Post glorifies
US military "ruthlessness" in Iraq
[20 April 2005]
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