NBC News Authenticate Downing Street Memos

[Nbadan]

More British memos on pre-Iraq war concerns
Officials deny intelligence that facts were fixed to invade Iraq
By Andrea Mitc
Correspondent

WASHINGTON —

It started during British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign last month, when details leaked about a top-secret memo, written in July 2002 — eight months before the Iraq war. In the memo, British officials just back from Washington reported that prewar "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq.

Just last week, President Bush and Blair vigorously denied that war was inevitable.

“No, the facts were not being fixed, in any shape or form at all,” said Blair at a White House news conference with the president on June 7.

But now, war critics have come up with seven more memos, verified by NBC News.

More:MSNBC

Rep. John Conyers and his gang at Downing Street Memo have put together a list of half a million signatures calling for a immediate Congressional investigation into the Downing Street memo and the charges that the WH shaped pre-war intelligence on Saddam and Iraq.

This claim has been further verified by W's long-time ghose writer...

Published on Thursday, October 28, 2004 by GNN.tv
Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer
by Russ Baker

HOUSTON -- Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work - and long before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for war - has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear Bush's unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and other matters - well before he became president.


<snip>

Common Dreams

On its face, all evidence, both cir stantial and non, indicates that this all started with a remove Saddam "at all costs" policy and that the "case for war" was cooked up thru methods of fear and deception. There is absolutely not one shred of evidence to suggest otherwise.

We have been saying this for years. Joe Wilson, Paul O'Neil, Richard Clarke have confirmed it. Wes Clark has confirmed it. Anyone willing to speak out has confirmed it. The memos confirm it. Lack of WMD confirms it. The "ever shifting case for why were are there" confirms it. The "no end in sight or concrete goals" confirm it.

This started w/ the PNAC Neocons and Bush. They plotted and planned a war from the get go. It is on record at the PNAC site for years that they wanted to remove Saddam, aggressively. They urged Clinton to do it. They had Bush's ear, he did it, wantonly.

Anyone who takes two minutes to connect the dots will see that this indeed was a case of "facts and intelligence being fixed around the policy".

It is a no-brainer and our Pravda-esque journalism is only finally starting to pay lip service to this notion that any bright person would come to naturally.

It's all disgusting and reeks to high heaven because people lost their lives and loved ones on both sides. All for a pack of lies. There are a lot of people that should be ashamed of themselves and excuse themselves from public life, forever.

It's all so disgusting and if Bush isn't impeached, We don't live in a free country anymore.

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile, the Exposing of the Corporate media for the NeoCon s that they are continues...

Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Ret.) has identified 50 false news stories created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus.

Bush administration officials are probably having second thoughts about their decision to play hardball with former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Joe Wilson is a contender. When you play hardball with Joe, you better be prepared to deal with some serious rebound.

After Wilson wrote a critically timed New York Times essay exposing as false George W. Bush's claim that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, high officials in the White House contacted several Washington reporters and leaked the news that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent.

(snip)

The 56-page investigation was assembled by USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam Gardiner. "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II" identifies more than 50 stories about the Iraq war that were faked by government propaganda artists in a covert campaign to "market" the military invasion of Iraq.

Scoop

[Nbadan]

Did Government legal counsel try and warn the WH that Gitmo may not be legal?

Do ent Shows Top Pentagon Officials Warned About Guantanamo Bay Interrogation Tactics

June 15, 2005 — The interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in 2002 triggered concerns among senior Pentagon officials that they could face criminal prosecution under U.S. anti-torture laws, ABC News has learned.

Notes from a series of meetings at the Pentagon in early 2003 — obtained by ABC News — show that Alberto Mora, General Counsel of the Navy, warned his superiors that they might be breaking the law.


No such letter was issued.

Source: ABC News

[Nbadan]

The authentication of the Downing Street Memos continues...

June 15 - Two senior British government officials today acknowledged as authentic a series of 2002 pre-Iraq war memos stating that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program was "effectively frozen" and that there was "no recent evidence" of Iraqi ties to international terrorism—private conclusions that contradicted two key pillars of the Bush administration's public case for the invasion in March 2003.

A March 8, 2002, secret "options" paper prepared by Prime Minister Tony Blair's top national-security aides also stated that intelligence on Saddam's purported weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was "poor." While noting that Saddam had used such weapons in the past and could do so again "if his regime were threatened," the options paper concluded "there is no greater threat now than in recent years that Saddam will use WMD."

The options paper was written just one month before Blair met with President Bush in Crawford, Texas. According to another leaked internal memo, Blair agreed at the meeting to support a U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam’s regime provided that “certain conditions” were met. Those conditions, according to the newly leaked memo, were that efforts be made to “construct a coalition” and “shape” public opinion; that the Israeli-Palestinian crisis was “quiescent,” and that attempts to eliminate Iraqi WMD through the return of United Nations weapons inspectors be exhausted.

The British do ents are becoming something of a cause celebre among Capitol Hill Democrats and other critics of the Iraq war who see them as evidence that the Bush administration had privately committed to an invasion far earlier than it has publicly acknowledged—and then “fixed” the intelligence about Iraq to justify the policy.

Source:MSNBC

Folks, if the Corporate Media was paying attention this would be bigger than Watergate.