Oh noooo! No impeachment? Oh nooo!
Posted on 06/29/2005 12:28:09 PM PDT by Tatze
LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday the "Downing Street memos" paint a distorted picture, and he insisted that the Iraq war was not predetermined by the United States.
"People say the decision was already taken. The decision was not already taken," he said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press.
Blair added he was "a bit astonished" at the intensive U.S. media coverage about the leaked memos, which suggested the White House viewed the war with Iraq as inevitable.
And I note that Yahoo buried this off of their main AP news page. Not surprising at all, actually.
Katrina Vanden Hoover :P is looking even more like a grounded 8-year-old than usual on reading this.
Kerry will keep on pursuing this because he is a dufus.
Well, it wasnt an excerpt when I first posted it, but now I see AP or Yahoo has added the rest of the article to the link:
According to the minutes of the meeting, Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of Britain's intelligence service, said the White House viewed military action against Saddam Hussein as inevitable following the Sept. 11 attacks.
President Bush "wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," read the memo, seen by the AP. "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
In the interview, Blair said raising such concerns was a natural part of any examination of the cause for war.
"The trouble with having a political discussion on the basis of things that are leaked is that they are always taken right out of context. Everything else is omitted from the discussion and you end up focusing on a specific document," he said.
"It would be absolutely weird if, when the Iraq issue was on the agenda, you were not constantly raising issues, trying to work them out, get them in the right place," he said.
Details of the memos appeared in British newspapers last month but the news in Britain quickly turned to the May 5 election that returned Blair to power. In the United States, however, the revelations raised criticism among opponents of the Bush administration.
"I am a bit astonished at how this has received such coverage in the U.S. because the fact is, after the memo was done, we went to the United Nations," Blair said.
"What people forget about that memo is that that (it) occurred nine months before the conflict. ... So whatever issues there were, we resolved them ultimately by saying we have got to give it one last chance to work peacefully."
Blair also said it was "vitally important" for coalition troops to remain in Iraq "until the job is done."
"That is vitally important. If we defeat these insurgents and terrorists in Iraq — and we'll only defeat them with the Iraqi people — we will beat that terrorism and insurgency worldwide," he said.
Blair's comments came a day after Bush, in a nationally televised address, promised to keep U.S. forces in Iraq until the fight is won.
"The most important thing we can do in Iraq is concentrate on the fact ... that what is happening there is a monumental battle that affects our own security," Blair said.
"You've got every bad element in the whole of the Middle East in Iraq trying to stop that country (from getting) on its feet and (becoming) a democracy.
"The world for both of us changed after Sept. 11," Blair said. "What happened for me after Sept. 11 is that the balance of risk changed. I took the view that if these people ever got hold of nuclear, chemical or biological capability, they would probably use it."
Sept. 11 "changed the whole picture. It changed the politics of how we dealt with the threat. And I still believe in a time to come it will be seen as important that we took that decision."
I saw him on CNN for about two minutes last night. He looked like a crash test dummy with a wedgie.
Mr. Blair, it is the function of most of the US media to undermine a Republican president as much as they can and to be another arm of the DNC.
Blair added he was "a bit astonished" at the intensive U.S. media coverage about the leaked memos
Just a week ago, I remember reading about how everybody in Europe was absolutely astonished by how little coverage this brouhaha was receiving in the American press.
It was one of those dopey liberal (“I get my news from the BBC on cable!”) talking points they use to impress each other.
Kerry will pursue this before it pursues him, before he pursues it...
I could flip-flop this forever. =P
Bush jumpstarts support last night. Australia, Romania and Britain chime in with strong support. Others may have, but I haven't sen their comments.
How will the Left compete? With statements from Chirac? LOL
One speech from this President re-energizes everyone.
Nice little stab Tony took at the nitwits over here. Truth is that he knows, as we know, the reason it receives attention is because we have two year olds that cannot accept they lost elections.
Time to dust off the "Blair is Bush's Lap Dog" arguments!
Intensive media coverage? You'd be lucky to even find the thing in the New York Times! The DUmmies were going wild, lashing out at the MSPress for bashing the memos and/or totally ignoring them.
And rightly so! There is not one bit of clear cut evidence by these memos suggesting that Bush or Blair intentionally mislead the country or fixed intelligence--and even the liberal press has had to admit that.
Oh noooo! No impeachment? Oh nooo!
Blair's warning about taking one document out of context is right on.
So, where are all the posters who are always saying things like, "The AP sucks" and "The AP is just a tool of the Left?"
The liberal's case is a dead issue since Iraq never surrendered or signed a peace treaty after the Gulf War.
Raymond Kraft: "There was a cease-fire contingent on Iraq's compliance with UN Security Council Resolutions, with which Saddam never complied."
Anyone with even half a brain knows that it was inevitable actually. No wonder the dems seem so surprised!
This is what I have understood...
The "Downing Street Memo" is not a memo at all, it is personal notes taken by some observer totally out of the loop... In fact these "memos" do not even exist, the originals were destroyed... they were "re-typed" by God only knows who and the press is treating them like Dan Rather treats his "documents."
The 'memo' was not destroyed, one of the copies was leaked to Telegraph reporter Michael Smith who photocopied it and it was returned to it's place.
He has said that he transcribed the contents from the photocopy and destroyed the photocopy, I think that is where the misunderstanding comes from. There is no doubt that the contents are genuine however.
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