DSM - I fear we may have been fucked like we've never been fucked before

Stinky The Clown

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Mon Jun-20-05 07:17 PM
Original message

DSM - I fear we may have been fucked like we've never been fucked before

Edited on Mon Jun-20-05 07:23 PM by Husb2Sparkly

Please, before you go through this, I sincerely hope I am wrong, wrong, wrong ....... but let me share my fears ......

I just finished listening to Michael Smith, the UK reporter who broke the Downing Street Minutes story. David Gregory was hosting in place of Tweety and I think Gregory allowed Smith a fair and unvarnished airing of the story.

So what worries me?

Smith says he got the story from the source. The source, he says, gave him the **original** documents. He further says no one in the British government has disputed the authenticity of the documents, although they (UK Gov't insiders) have cutely avoided saying the common interpretation is correct.

When he came back to the paper with these original documents, he says *the lawyers* told him to photocopy the originals, retain and work from the photocopies, and return the originals to their source. The rationale for this was to make the photocopies the property of the newspaper and thereby avoid any chance that the British government could ask for (demand) them back.

Now, if you know anything about corporate newspapers, 'the lawyers' work for the parent organization, generally, and not the actual news organization. And who is that paper's parent organization?

Rupert Murdoch.

So .... Mr. Smith has the memos typed (and he said, specifically, using a typewriter - which seems hugely odd to me, and I am unable to think of a reason to do that, if, indeed, that is what happened). He says he had them typed so as to shield from public scrutiny the source name. He felt that the source could be identified (by elimination, he said) from the source documents, original or photocopy.

Then there's the case of the odd, or not, phraseology of the memo - 'fixing the intelligence around the policy'. A study in interpretive ambiguity of ever there was one.

Now ....... imagine, if you will, a Robert Ludlum novel. The documents were fabricated from whole cloth and given to Mr. Smith as authentic. Or perhaps Mr. Smith is an actor in this plot. In any case, the entire world gets all frothy at the mouth over this smoking gun. Hearings are held. Righteous indignation is based solely on these documents.

And the whole thing is sham. Rathergate with a twist. The Rathergaters allow us to shout the story from the rooftops. And we have.

But is there another shoe that they will not allow to fall, but rather, will use to pummel us into complete submission and relegate anyone who said the documents were what we said they were completely useless. Neutered like no cat or dog has ever been neutered by the Humane Society.

Have we been fucked or have I been thinking and hoping far too much and far too deeply?

Please, God, let my fears be completely unfounded. Let me be no more than a an old loon. A clown. Skilled at nothing more than squirting seltzer down people's pants. Please ... prove me wrong.

Edit to add the word 'may' in the title.