U.S. Press Coverage Lacking on 2002 Iraq Meetings, Memo
Kucinich's website has the following call to action up:
The Sunday, May 1, 2005 leak of the Downing Street minutes by the Times of London was an exclusive bombshell. It reported that on July 23, 2002, "eight months before the invasion began and long before the public was told war was inevitable ... [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair was right from the outset committed to supporting US plans for 'regime change' in Iraq; war was already seen as 'inevitable'; and the [British] attorney-general was already warning of grave doubts about its legality.
"[British Foreign Secretary Jack] Straw even said the case for war was 'thin'. So Blair and his inner circle set about devising a plan to justify invasion.
"'If the political context were right,' said Blair, 'people would support regime change.' Straightforward regime change, though, was illegal. They needed another reason."
That is a direct quote from the Sunday Times of London article of statements taken from the minutes of a meeting between Blair and his senior advisors. A week and half before, the BBC had made the first reference to the minutes, but the Times article was the first to get and actually publish the leaked minutes of the U.K. meeting.
From the minutes, reporting on a meeting between a senior British official and members of the Bush Administration in Washington: "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
Activists on the DailyKos and other blogs online picked it up on the 30th of April, but the story did not get much interest on Kos until Congressman John Conyers, Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in about it on the 2nd of May.
On May 5 Congressman Conyers, along with many Members of Congress including Dennis Kucinich, wrote a letter to President Bush asking for an explanation. The White House, so far, has failed to respond.
The first mention in the U.S. press appears to be a Knight-Ridder story seen online on May 5th. Today (May 12) CNN Online posted its article titled Bush asked to explain UK war memo. References to the minutes of the meeting as a "memo" create confusion between memos describing other meetings and the leaked minutes of the meeting in July, 2003. The Los Angeles Times published Indignation Grows in U.S. Over British Prewar Documents.
The story is all over the foreign press, from Great Britain to New Zealand. You can help by using CNN Online's email-this-article feature to share its article with friends and keep interest high.
Subscribe to this blog's feed