OK, Maybe I Do Care

So first this was on Maria's page, and then it showed up on Peg's. When it was there I commented something like "well, anyone that cares isn't surprised, and anyone who's surprised really doesn't care."

This, for me, has been the disappointing truth to the "Downing Street Memo" which pretty much wraps it up for any deniability that the Bush administration had any intension other than to invade Iraq. I've said it before, the run up was all so much tap dancing. We all should have known this was the case, and many people I think do - but now, now there's proof.

Independent confirmation of all things.

This isn't something coming out of Howard Dean's office. It wasn't run off of Dan Rather's typewriter. Hilary Clinton didn't print it on Chelsea's mac. Nobody who is "out to get" the current administration fabricated this document. It is fairly undeniably proof.

OK well I am sure they can and will deny it. But they ought to look even more idiotic spinning this than they did trying to convince us in the first place. Truth be told, I don't think they care. Remember when Dennis Miller translated the Reaganese of trickle down economics and explained that they were actually saying "we're pissing on you" and we still lapped it up? I think the posture of the current administration would be "So, you caught us. So what? We only lied to you because you didn't have what it took to do what we knew had to be done anyway. What are you going to do about it?"

And my answer to that would be a somewhat sheepish "well, nothing probably." Mostly because I am convinced that at least 50% of America wants to be governed this way. They don't want to see what's in the sausage.

Today I was stuck in a totally unexplained traffic jam - we were on our way to the Kenneth Cole store to buy a Kenneth Cole watch, turned out they didn't carry it but that's another post - and I heard Counterspin on the radio. On YEP. Counterspin is a somewhat more sarcastic and less narcissistic version of the CNN show Reliable Sources on which they talk about the news media as the story. After listening I would say that Counterspin has a somewhat liberal or libertarian bias - but lately I wouldn't think there's anything really wrong with that.

They spent a lot of time talking about the unveiling of Deep Throat, and how its sort of promoted an old home week in the news. There seems to be this perception that Watergate was some sort of defining moment for investigative journalism. This lead to a discussion of how lately that kind of dogged persistence and dedicated reporting has really disappeared. Thinking about it, I believe this is somewhat true. There seem to be many more human interest type stories promoted for 20/20 and 60 Minutes than anything hard core. I can't recall USA Today ever uncovering anything. This discussion was all a set up to talk about how in many ways the Downing Street Memo is a bigger deal than Watergate.

The thought being that if the media of today were the media of the Watergate period that this memo would have been the beginning of a literal shitstorm for the Bush administration. It shows they were predetermined. It shows they were spinning the intelligence to get what they wanted and to represent their cause to the world as just, and it shows that they have lied about their process to multiple parties on multiple occasions in the aftermath.

That's probably worth enumerating again. In the least, the Downing Street Memo shows:

• the plan in Iraq was predetermined, not based on current events.
• the administration was aware of intelligence on both sides, was specifically selective in listening to only those sources that agreed with their thoughts.
• that they spun the intelligence to the US population and the world as some kind of justification.
• and that they have lied over and over about how they came to their plan of action as we've gone along.

In the face of proof, someone ought to stand up and take responsibility. I don't think anything will come of it, but there ought to be independent investigations, and the people that lied to us ought to be made to come forward and explain their actions. If something happens to them, that's something else.

So I guess I do care. And I guess its worth trying to do something about it. Peg's post asks for you to talk to your news outlets and try to get them to cover the story. Once again I think I am asking people to write their congressmen.

It's important. We should care. Someone ought to step up. In the interim it ought to be us.