'Smoking gun' memo still draws mostly blanks in MSM
More than two weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch's Times of London threw another log on the fire of Iraq War coverage with the revelation of a July 2002 memo to Prime Minister Tony Blair that said President Bush's administration was so bent on war with Iraq that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." There it was, months before Congress was even asked to authorize the use of force, the warhawks were known to be cooking the intel. British intelligence reported to the prime minister:
"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."
Downing Street has not disowned the memo. U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity confirm the memo. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan) wrote a letter, signed by 88 fellow Congress members, asking President Bush "what gives?" thus fulfilling the duties of the loyal opposition. America's news junkies waited for this bombshell to explode onto the front pages and newscasts. And waited.
We're still waiting. Meanwhile, most people -- try asking your friends who aren't blogoholics -- are still entirely unaware of this latest bit of evidence. The story has seeped out like details of Dick Cheney's energy summit. Knight-Ridder ran with the story within days, but few outside the chain picked it up. The Washington Post's ombud fended off a few complaints about the lack of coverage, which finally sprouted on the inside pages by the end of last week, one day after the Los Angeles Times woke up to the story. Buried inside, of course. And what of the "paper of record"? The New York Times mentioned the London story in its coverage of the UK elections, but otherwise -- no record.
UPDATE: Update: Paul Krugman mentions the memo in Monday's NYT, and includes a link to an apparently new organization zeroing in on the false case for war.
Apparently, the problem with the news media seriously investigating a serious allegation that Americans were misled into war is that it's so seriously dog-bites-man stuff. Old news. Walter Pincus implied as much in his Post story:
"Although critics of the Iraq war have accused Bush and his top aides of misusing what has since been shown as limited intelligence in the prewar period, Bush's critics have been unsuccessful in getting an investigation of that matter.
"The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has dropped its previous plan to review how U.S. policymakers used Iraq intelligence, and the president's commission on intelligence did not look into the subject because it was not authorized to do so by its charter, Laurence H. Silberman, the co-chairman, told reporters last month."
I've been News-Googling "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," the "smoking" line of the Downing Street memo, and even after the Post story, the number of hits after two weeks has climbed to only 193, mostly foreign press and alts. Editor & Publisher -- God love 'em -- is optimistic that the story is "gaining traction."
What kind of story has the necessary "traction" for the mainstream US media? I similarly Google Laura Bush's "male horse" joke, and I get 210 hits. Which story is the more serious jerk-off?