"President Must Answer to Downing Street Memo"

In sci.space.policy Scott Hedrick wrote:

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
Hell, from the British point of view the American revolutionary forces
were all unlawful combatants, as were all the Confederate forces during
the Civil War as seen from the Northern point of view.

Exactly so- the flaw in your analogy, Pat, is that the unlawful combatant
forces you mentioned were rebelling against their government, not defending
against a foreign one.


The moment US forces became the 'occupying force' of Iraq, they became
their government.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Jim Oberg wrote:

It appears that the notorious 'Downing Street memos' are not original
documents but 'reconstructions' based on originals that have been
conveniently destroyed. Does that raise any red flags in people eager to
believe the worst interpretation of them?



It depends if independent sources inside the British government confirm
that the memos are accurate.
The Guardian Unlimited says that has happened:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...083737,00.html
Or that other sources come forward with identical copies of the memos
that can be shown to be official government ones.
Another way of knowing that they fakes would be if the Blair Government
came out and said that they were fakes; or that for that matter the
people who the memos are supposed to be from state that they are inaccurate.
So far that has not happened. Since the memos have been published in the
press, and the people who they are credited to have certainly read them,
and would know if that is indeed what they wrote. So far there has been
a deafening silence on their part regarding the memos being faked.
So what's going on? IMHO, Perfidious Albion is getting ready to jump
ship on the Iraq War, and has purposely leaked these memos as step one
of that process. As to what happens to Bush in that process...well, why
should Britain give a hoot in hell what happens to Bush. It's like his
dad in the Avenger torpedo bomber- he told the two guys in the back to
bail out. Whatever happened to them after that wasn't his problem.
If this is what's going on, the scenario for the next few weeks should
go like this:
More incriminating evidence regarding the Bush White House's will come out.
This will cause Tony Blair to step down (he's possibly intending to do
this anyway, so no big deal)
The new PM will withdraw the British forces from Iraq.
George Bush will be shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover that some
of his most trusted advisors mislead him on Iraq, and the Great Purge
shall begin. (I'm still trying to figure out who's going to get purged,
but I'm pretty sure Cheney's name is near the top of the list. As is
Rumsfeld's).
A new and very non-controversial VP will be appointed- Powell? McCain?
Whoever it is, it will be someone who he's told to appoint by the
Republican Party, rather than his own choice....which would probably be
Condoleezza Rice.
The Purgee's will then turn on the President like a school of sharks on
a wounded schoolmate, and probably on each other as well.
The President will resign, and the new President will withdraw the
troops for Iraq.
The Iraqi's will have a major Sunni/Shiite civil war in which the
Shiites will probably win.
Iran and Iraq will then get real cozy, and form some sort of a
military/political alliance. (If the Sunnis win, and he's still alive,
then don't be surprised if Saddam gets back into power. And kills all
the Shiites.)
What happens then is anyone's guess. But it might involve a conventional
or nuclear war with Israel.
The wild card in all this is if the Great California Earthquake happens,
and massive rescue work needs to be done... which would normally
require getting the Army and National Guard into major action- which one
could do if a large number of them weren't in Iraq....although it would
be a great excuse to bring them home, wouldn't it?
At least that's what the Magic Eight Ball suggests. :-\


Pat

Scott Lowther wrote:



And then, like a buncha damned retards, they had to go and attack Fort
Sumter. Bah. An agrarian slave-based nation attacking an ajoining
industrial nation. Just plain stupid.


How about an industrial nation attacking an adjoining agrarian
slave-based nation?
It was called Operation Barbarossa, IIRC. :-D

Pat

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 04:26:36 GMT, Scott Lowther
wrote:

That is why it is called the War of Northern Aggression.

Only by those who don't correctly refer to it as the War of Southern
Aggression.

....*Both* sides were the aggressors when you get down to the core of
the matter. That's why the correct name is the War Betwixt the States.


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 04:12:48 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

On that basis shouldn't you be invading Saudi Arabia?

Yes, but until there's sufficient oil flowing from other places that
would be disastrous for the world economy.

....Not necessarily. We simply explain to the other OPEC extortionists
that unless they up the output and lower the price, they're next. It's
what we should have done the second they raised prices in '73 in
retaliation for the Six-Day War.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

"Jim Oberg"
It appears that the notorious 'Downing Street memos'
are not original documents but 'reconstructions' based
on originals that have been conveniently destroyed.
Does that raise any red flags in people eager to
believe the worst interpretation of them?

Yeah sure sort of. I find nothing particularly incendiary about the
memos even if taken at face value. It was obvious to me based on press
reports that during the time frame discussed that the US was in contact
with the UK trying to get support lined up, and that Bush and his press
aids were spinning the hell out of every UN vote and every mention of
Iraq in the press in order to portray Iraq as a clear and immediate
threat. The memo just restates what was obvious to the contemporaneous
observer, in short.

Reed Snellenberger wrote:


Unless additional copies of the original memos can be produced, or
their original author(s) are identified and required to testify as to
their being a true copy of any presumed memo(s) he may have written,
they should be treated as forgeries and ignored.

The memos mention meetings involving specific persons at which specific
things were discussed:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...083737,00.html
The people mentioned include :

Condoleezza Rice
Tony Blair
David Manning- Blair's chief foreign policy adviser.
Peter Ricketts- British foreign office political director.
Jack Straw- Britain's Foreign Secretary.
Sir Richard Dearlove- chief of Britain's intelligence service at the
time the memo in question was written.
....as well as a report on Iraq from the Overseas and Defense Secretariat
to the Cabinet Office, and a briefing paper dated July 21, 2002, given
to Blair and government officials before a meeting on July 23, 2002,
about Iraq.

With that many people quoted, someone should be denouncing this all if
it is indeed a series of forgeries, starting with Blair.
This story first broke in Britain way back on May 5th.
Has anyone denied it yet?

This is somewhat interesting also:
http://www.maconareaonline.com/news.asp?id=11137

From that report:

"February 2001 - Only one month after the first Bush-Cheney
inauguration, the State Department's Pam Quanrud organizes a secret
confab in California to make plans for the invasion of Iraq and removal
of Saddam. US oil industry advisor Falah Aljibury and others are asked
to interview would-be replacements for a new US-installed dictator.

On BBC Television's Newsnight, Aljibury himself explained,

"It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was
to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime."

March 2001 - Vice-President Dick Cheney meets with oil company
executives and reviews oil field maps of Iraq. Cheney refuses to release
the names of those attending or their purpose. Harper's has since
learned their plan and purpose -- see below.

October/November 2001 - An easy military victory in Afghanistan
emboldens then-Dep. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to convince the
Administration to junk the State Department "coup" plan in favor of an
invasion and occupation that could remake the economy of Iraq. And
elaborate plan, ultimately summarized in a 101-page document, scopes out
the "sale of all state enterprises" -- that is, most of the nation's
assets, ". especially in the oil and supporting industries."

2002 - Grover Norquist and other corporate lobbyists meet secretly with
Defense, State and Treasury officials to ensure the invasion plans for
Iraq include plans for protecting "property rights." The result was a
pre-invasion scheme to sell off Iraq's oil fields, banks, electric
systems, and even change the country's copyright laws to the benefit of
the lobbyists' clients. Occupation chief Paul Bremer would later order
these giveaways into Iraq law.

Fall 2002 - Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, is brought in
by the Pentagon to plan the management of Iraq's oil fields. He works
directly with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. "There were plans," says
Carroll, "maybe even too many plans" -- but none disclosed to the public
nor even the US Congress.

January 2003 - Robert Ebel, former CIA oil analyst, is sent, BBC learns,
to London to meet with Fadhil Chalabi to plan terms for taking over
Iraq's oil.

March 2003 - What White House spokesman Ari Fleisher calls "Operations
Iraqi Liberation" (OIL) begins. (Invasion is re-christened "OIF" --
Operation Iraqi Freedom.)

March 2003 - Defense Department is told in confidence by US Energy
Information Administrator Guy Caruso that Iraq's fields are incapable of
a massive increase in output. Despite this intelligence, Dep. Secretary
Wolfowitz testifies to Congress that invasion will be a free ride. He
swears, "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be
U.S. taxpayer money. .We're dealing with a country that can really
finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," a deliberate
fabrication promoted by the Administration, an insider told BBC, as
"part of the sales pitch" for war.

May 2003 - General Jay Garner, appointed by Bush as viceroy over Iraq,
is fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The general revealed in
an interview for BBC that he resisted White House plans to sell off
Iraq's oil and national assets.

"That's just one fight you don't want to take on," Garner told me. But
apparently, the White House wanted that fight.

The general also disclosed that these invade-and-grab plans were
developed long before the US asserted that Saddam still held WDM:

"All I can tell you is the plans were pretty elaborate; they didn't
start them in 2002, they were started in 2001."

November/December 2003 - Secrecy and misinformation continues even after
the invasion. The oil industry objects to the State Department plans for
Iraq's oil fields and drafts for the Administration a 323-page plan,
"Options for [the] Iraqi Oil Industry." Per the industry plan, the US
forces Iraq to create an OPEC-friendly state oil company that supports
the OPEC cartel's extortionate price for petroleum"

What is so amazing is that all this was out there, but no one in the
U.S. mainstream media was willing to talk about it.
We're just hearing about the Downing Street memos now; they've been one
of the top stories in Britain for several weeks.

Pat

Scott M. Kozel wrote:

No union soldier was killed or injured at the Fort Sumter incident,



Not for any lack of trying on the Confederate's side, of course.. it was
just one tough fort.
From: http://www.civilwarhome.com/CMHsumter.htm

"For thirty-four hours they assaulted Sumter with an unceasing
bombardment, before its gallant defenders consented to give it up, and
not then until the condition of the fort made it impossible to continue
the defense. Port Moultrie alone fired 2,490 shot and shell. Gen. S. W.
Crawford, in his accurate and admirable book, previously quoted, thus
describes the condition of Sumter when Anderson agreed to its surrender:

"It was a scene of ruin and destruction. The quarters and barracks
were in ruins. The main gates and the planking of the windows on the
gorge were gone;the magazines closed and surrounded by smouldering
flames and burning ashes; the provisions exhausted; much of the
engineering work destroyed; and with only four barrels of powder
available. The command had yielded to the inevitable. The effect of
the direct shot had been to indent the walls, where the marks could
be counted by hundreds, while the shells, well directed, had crushed
the quarters, and, in connection with hot shot, setting them on
fire, had destroyed the barracks and quarters down to the gun
casemates, while the enfilading fire had prevented the service of
the barbette guns, some of them comprising the most important
battery in the work. The breaching fire from the columbiads and the
rifle gun at Cummings point upon the right gorge 'angle, had
progressed sensibly and must have eventually succeeded if continued,
but as yet no guns had been disabled or injured at that point. The
effect of the fire upon the parapet was pronounced. The gorge, the
right face and flank as well as the left face, were all taken in
reverse, and a destructive fire maintained until the end, while the
gun carriages on the barbette of the gorge were destroyed in the
fire of the blazing quarters." "

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
Reed Snellenberger wrote:
Unless additional copies of the original memos can be produced, or
their original author(s) are identified and required to testify as to
their being a true copy of any presumed memo(s) he may have written,
they should be treated as forgeries and ignored.

The memos mention meetings involving specific persons at which specific
things were discussed:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...083737,00.html
The people mentioned include :

Condoleezza Rice
Tony Blair
David Manning- Blair's chief foreign policy adviser.
Peter Ricketts- British foreign office political director.
Jack Straw- Britain's Foreign Secretary.
Sir Richard Dearlove- chief of Britain's intelligence service at the
time the memo in question was written.
...as well as a report on Iraq from the Overseas and Defense Secretariat
to the Cabinet Office, and a briefing paper dated July 21, 2002, given
to Blair and government officials before a meeting on July 23, 2002,
about Iraq.

With that many people quoted, someone should be denouncing this all if
it is indeed a series of forgeries, starting with Blair.
This story first broke in Britain way back on May 5th.
Has anyone denied it yet?

Let's put this in some context.

In the US, prior to the Presidential election, a known
and self-acknowledged Bush hater forged a set of alledged
Air National Guard internal memos and got them released
to CBS and 60 Minutes II, where Dan Rather and his
investigative team ran with the story.

The memo forgeries were quite likely a reasonable approximation
of describing what happened with Bush's Air National Guard service,
which was not service in the finest traditions. Bush never
denied that the fundamental claims that he didn't completely
serve his term were somewhat valid.

Despite the fact that those memo forgeries were arguably
not factually wrong information, the man who forged them
is now discredited forever, Dan Rather is no longer the
CBS News anchor, his 60 Minutes II staff mostly were
fired and the show shut down, and the whole episode was
treated as a clear sign of the ongoing failure of the
media to police itself in terms of accuracy.


Fast forwards to the Downing Street Memos. Parallels appear
to abound.

It is possible that the account given, that they were
retyped from other originals which were accurate,
is true, in which case there's a credibility issue
but no fabrication.

It's also true that they were created out of whole cloth
by a reporter who took a bunch of people's meeting iteneraries
and their public comments and perhaps some inside info from
sources and guesed at the rest, and wrote up credible sounding
and accurate but fundamentally fake documents for his story.

The participants in those meetings aren't likely to call
foul if the documents are apparently accurate, as with
Bush not disputing the facts of his ANG service.

But all it takes to be accurate on these points is to have
been listening to various public comments and what's been
admitted on the record and look at people's iteneraries.

Despite all the hype, the particulars contained within
the memos aren't smoking guns of US administration
malfeasance or anything else which wasn't already
known publically.

The fundamental question remains not whether the documents
are accurate, but whether they are genuine.

The reporter has discredited that, so far, and recent events
indicate that he is likely to pay for it.

In the US someone would FOIA the originals and we'd see.
Unlike the ANG case, the documents are contemporary enough
that they almost certainly survive intact within the various
UK ministry offices.

In the UK I don't know if you can do something like FOIA.

I certainly await further clarification. Though suspicious,
I don't have any sort of factual evidence in front of me proving
they were forgeries. But that sort of thing, once it starts
to unravel, tends to come all the way apart rapidly. So we
should find out for real in the next week or two.


-george william herbert

George William Herbert wrote:

Unfortunately, this is a naive and ignorant viewpoint.

Spies and Saboteurs have always been excluded from
the prisoner of war treaties.



Ah-ha! Spies and saboteurs! But spies spy for foreign powers, and
saboteurs sabotage things for foreign powers... in short, they are in
the employ of a foreign power. Take that aspect away, and they become
mere criminals, and subject to civil law.
In a peculiar way, your argument makes Al Queda either something
equivalent to an organized crime syndicate- and subject to civil law; or
a full blown foreign power- and subject to the Geneva Conventions in the
treatment of its members as prisoners to that given to prisoners of a
foreign power.

Pat