CSM: Why has 'Downing Street memo' story been a 'dud' in US?

[ailsagirl]

From the Christian Science Monitor
May 17, 2005

=snip=

"...the potentially explosive revelation has proven to be something of a dud in the United States," reports the Chicago Tribune.

The White House has denied the premise of the memo, the American media have reacted slowly to it and the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for the war. All of this has contributed to something less than a robust discussion of a memo that would seem to bolster the strongest assertions of the war's critics.

The Los Angeles Times reported last Thursday that the story "appears to have blown over quickly in Britain."

But in the United States, where the reports at first received scant attention, there has been growing indignation among critics of the Bush White House, who say the documents help prove that the leaders made a secret decision to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nearly a year before launching their attack, shaped intelligence to that aim and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy.

Democrats and other war critics have launched campaigns to get this story a wider hearing. In a letter to President Bush released May 6, 89 Democratic members of Congress said the memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of our own administration." This move failed to gain the sort of media attention that normally elicits a quick response from the administration, which did not comment on the memo until Monday.

There's much more!!
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0517/dailyUpdate.html

[renate]

1. well, I think I know why it didn't get much attention in the US

We were all on tenterhooks waiting to see who would win "American Idol." One important story at a time, please.

[bling bling]

2. I know why. Because nobody knows about it.

I've asked some people who ordinarily pay attention to the news, both local and nationally, not one of them even heard of the Downing Street Memo.

[TexasLawyer]

17. Right,

it just hasn't been in the news. My own Houston Chronicle mentioned the Downing Street Memo a total of once. If you missed it, then you're SOL unless you actively seek out news from the foreign press via the internet.

[wtmusic]

3. Because most don't care

The revelation that Dubya was going into Iraq no matter what is over two years old. The fact that he's a proven liar, a criminal, and a hypocrite doesn't matter.

When their sons and daughters come back in pieces it starts to sink in. Until then, just keep waving that flag...

[chknltl]

4. Sent CSM an e-mail

I urged them to check again on that "dud" memo by checking in with Rep. Conyers. Figure he might have a little something extra for them on that topic. I also asked them to please do a little research on depleted uranium munitions, adding a couple of links to get them started. I tried not to be a "troll" about it. That stuff really does not care what your religion is or which political party you back. CSMs readership has kids over in the radiation zones as well so who knows.... I don't care how they spin it, that is even if they bother to report on it, what matters to me is getting the word out, so I continue to do so. Thank you for that link in your post ailsagirl I hope I made good use of it.

[Fridays Child]

5. Dear CSM: Examine your navel some other time.

Right now, we have a (p)resident to impeach.

[chknltl]

6. rolf, rolf,rolf nt (but still rolf so thanks)

[KlatooBNikto]

7. In my opinion, CSM is correct.Even those who know about the memo,

will say that W had to do it in order to bring along the American people to his way of thinking.And that, folks, proves he is a great leader bar none.

[Wright Patman]

8. There was a groupthink

established beginning in August of 1990 that Saddam Hussein was the "new Hitler." He was ordering his invasion force in Kuwait to yank babies in hospitals from their incubators and throw them on the floor (a total lie, BTW). He had assembled a 250,000-strong force on the border with Saudi Arabia as a prelude to invasion (another total lie proven by Russian satellite photos, although not in time to challenge Cheney who first voiced the lie).

This was drummed into the American public incessantly for the next few months. Then Desert Storm occurred. When they didn't "get" Saddam at that time, it left people with a lot of "cognitive dissonance."

How can we leave Hitler in power, they thought? Well, the fact is he was never a Hitler. Even the so-called gassing of the Kurds was once attributed in an Army War College study to the Iranians.

Was he a brutal dictator? You bet. As we see now, that's probably the only kind of governance that can keep Iraq together as one country. I wish that were not so. But Yugoslavia is another example with Tito.

So here we were more than 12 years after the demonization process started and Saddam was still in power. The entire public had been brainwashed to believe that Saddam had to go--yesterday. It didn't really much matter if he had WMDs or not afterwards, because he was a "bad guy" and "the Iraqi people are better off" blah, blah, blah.

People at some level do not want to reexamine how they have been duped for going on 15 years now. It is too painful to realize how subject to manipulation they are. There are all sorts of assumptions they have made about * and his father which they can never question. Their heads would almost literally explode if they ever came to terms with the truth that is the BFEE.

[Amonester]

11. To the point they don't mind going broke

on their National "credit card account," and to send their kids, mothers, fathers, and relatives to war so a 'selected' few can fill up their secret off-shore bank accounts at their expense for the next twenty years?

Are they all completely stupid or just brainwashed by the CSM?????

From:

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20031218-074154-5698r.htm

Defense bleatings?

By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

<snip>

An article of faith among most Arab policymakers is that the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein a yellow-to-green light to invade Kuwait in 1990. Some of them will concede, albeit off the record, the yellow light was probably inadvertent and a reflection of inept diplomacy. Others state flatly, also off the record, that it had switched from yellow to green and that it was deliberate.

The option of a U.S. red light that signaled clearly "do not cross the Kuwaiti border" is dismissed out of hand. No such signal was ever given by the U.S. There is also much evidence that coddling a tyrant became the better part of valor for three U.S. presidents — Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush (41).

...

The Arab world's conspiracy theorists argue that when 100,000 troops and 300 tanks were poised at Kuwait's border in late July 1990, about to attack, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, gave Saddam the distinct impression the U.S. didn't care what happened. She had just returned to the U.S. Embassy from a meeting at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry when she got word that she was to come back to the ministry immediately. Without any explanation as to where she was going, she was taken to see Saddam. It was her first meeting with the president.

In a much-reported exchange, Miss Glaspie told Saddam "your inter-Arab disputes do not concern the United States but we strongly believe they should be settled peacefully."

...

Ask Arab interlocutors, again off the record, why the U.S. would have wanted Saddam to take over Kuwait? The answers are usually variations on the same theme: As a pretext to bring America's full military power into the Gulf to establish a protectorate over its vast oil resources.

...<snip>...


Do they know any of this???? Why do they want to pay for both blood and big oil, all the while a group of special interests (Big Oil Co. ) hijacked the highest levels of their government???

The People of the Civilized & Democratic World Out There Does Not Understand...

[dennis4868]

9. I think the biggest lie....

of all of Bush's lies before the war (and it gets no attention from anyone, even here at DU) was Bush telling the country, Congress, and the world that Saddam had unmanned aerial vehicles that could carry WMD to the UNITED STATES within hours. Bush and his thugs repeated this lie over and over leading up to the war yet the NIE and the intelligence wing of the Air Force said this was NOT TRUE. The intelligence stated that Saddam did not have unmanned aerial vehicles. But that is not what Bush was saying to Congress and Kerry, Hillary, and other Dems who believed him and voted for the illegal war.

[dave123williams]

10. Impeachment over a blowjob = fun. Impeachment over an actual high-crime..

...maybe not so fun.

[IndianaGreen]

12. Too many Democrats are afraid of the Republicans

to make matters worse, the corporations that own the media have a vested interest in protecting the image of our Divine Emperor.

Get a Democrat with cojones come out swinging on the Downing Street memo, as John Conyers has done, and you won't hear a word of it in the media.

Freedom of speech is meaningless if the only voices we hear are our own!

Freedom of the press is meaningless if the only news one gets are those that represent corporate interests.

[MADem]

13. I think it is because most Americans are quite stupid

They don't understand other systems of government, they fear that if they lock on to a story about what happened in the UK they will have to do a little boning up (duh, what's Downing Street?) and when British people talk, unless it is a Cockney accent selling you a cooking device on late night TV, they think "Masterpiece Theater" and switch to pro wrestling.

Only twenty percent of the voting public give a shit about anything--ten percent on either end of the spectrum. Perhaps another twenty percent or so can be motivated to get to the polls on election day, but they are "short term participants" who follow the issues for a month or two leading up to the election, and then go back to their own little worlds.

We just aren't very "politically interested" as a group. If we were, our politicians would not get away with half the shit they do now.

[Lexingtonian]

14. well, because it's not that easy

The people who thought the Iraq war was wrong from the start all think so. They've thought so since before it even took place because none of the claims or plans really presented a serious or humane solution to the problem. They're called hardline Democrats.
The people who thought the Iraq war was based on lies and deceptions all think so. They've thought so since the summer of 2003, when no 'weapons of mass destruction' or evidence of anything more than a standard repressive, corrupt, regime in a Third World country were found. They're called moderate Democrats.
The people who thought that despite the messy way of doing it, it might all benefit the Iraqi people, no longer think so. They've recognized that the 'democracy' is no such thing and American lives are wasted in occupying the country, variously over the past year or two. They're called Independents.

The people who are wavering about the Bush people's Iraq policy are moderate Republicans. And they don't care about any conspiracy in 2000 or 2001 or 2002 to start any war. The story of 1991 to 2003 in Iraq and Kuwait was a low intensity war, as they see it (and the facts do agree), so to them the Bush people merely decided to win a war that already existed.

So the memo has no impact in the U.S., because it only affirms suspicions and claims of people who already oppose the military venture.

What will affect moderate Republicans are facts that prove the cynical, minimal expectable, successes of the the venture are unattainably lost. I.e. the minimal military success, the occupation of all parts of the country that matter, has to be lost, the generals withdrawing because it's hopeless. The minimal political success, a puppet government that is formally respectable, has to fail irredeemably. The crimes against humanity trial of Saddam Hussein has to be decided one way or another- and at present it's defaulting to the point that the "Governing Council" death squads and warfare and license for torture are voiding most potential claims of Hussein's moral depravity. The evidence for demonstrating Hussein responsible for the nerve gassing of the Kurds in 1985 apparently is nonexistent or irrecoverable- and that was the last hope, really, for a conviction that would stand the test and scrutiny of history. Worst of all, the last Cold War allies of account and worth are starting to leave the venture, and so the nominal UN support for the thing will collapse.

The further extension and full breakout of the simmering Iraqi civil war is slowly dissolving all the facts on which the American occupation that moderate Repubs need in order to maintain support for the thing. The memo adds nothing. The "insurgency" everything.

Hardline Republicans are not wavering yet. But once all the things that affect moderate Repub support are gone, complete disaster is near. And Bush ordering withdrawal is what cracks them.

[bling bling]

15. Very well put.

Your whole analysis was very good.

In particular, I hadn't thought about the moderate repubs that way before in terms of their viewpoint on the war being an extension of Desert Storm. That makes it a little easier to understand why more Repubs aren't livid simply about Bush's lies and manipulative tactics about this war.

[indepat]

16. With a Repug Congress and MSM , a conservative Supreme Court, and an

easily duped general public, and a spineless Democratic party, a Repug president is going to get a pass to do absolutely whatever he wants. We can only hope he gets most of it mostly right (correct).

[gorbal]

18. It's not "A dud"

Just that the "mainstream" news doesn't cover it much, doesn't mean it's a dud. People keep forgetting that more people have the internet than cable, and more people dislike Bush than like him (according to recent polls at least).

We have more power these days than people realize, let's stop being depressed and use it.
http://www.johnconyers.com/

[librechik]

19. so I searched Lexis Nexis for the many times CSM covered this story

and zip is what I found. This May 17 story was followed up exactly no times. In fact, they didn't even post the story we're discussing to Lexis Nexis.

Gee, media not covering the story? Hmmm. Guess it's time to wake up and hope for a passing bandwagon.