Posted on 06/03/2005 10:20:46 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
I have a three-word response to the media frenzy that followed revelation of the long-secret identity of Deep Throat: Downing Street Memo.
Here's what John Dean, a key Watergate figure, wrote about Dubya's case for the Iraq war in a June 2003 column for www.findlaw.com: "To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. . . . Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be a 'high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause."
That's exactly what the Downing Street Memo, first reported a month ago by The Times of London, proves. The memo is an account of the report given to British leadership by Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's MI-6 (the equivalent of the CIA), after a meeting with top White House officials. Dearlove described, fully eight months before the invasion of Iraq, an American determination to go to war and to manipulate public and congressional opinion with what Dearlove characterized as a "thin" case for the presence of weapons of mass destruction and links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
It's hard not to contrast the frenzy that greeted the revelation of a 30-year-old secret with the thudding indifference U.S. media have given the Downing Street Memo. The memo has scarcely been mentioned in the country's leading newspapers and has been completely ignored by evening network news.
The reasons are numerous, but it adds up to a depressing reminder that Watergate, as reported in 1972–74, would never be reported today. The same secrecy, paranoia, and demands for absolute loyalty that were the undoing of the Nixon administration have been used, in our modern media climate, with resounding success by the Bush administration. Media outlets today are far less willing to invest the time and money in investigative journalism, far less willing to rock the boat or risk being tagged with the dreaded "liberal media" tag. The right-wing firestorm that followed the miscues of Dan Rather and Newsweek has further cowed big media outlets from taking risks, but the barriers were already there, as Gary Webb could testify if he hadn't killed himself last December. The career costs can be enormous for enterprising journalists who want to take on power, and the likelihood that your publisher will back you up these days, as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were backed up by The Washington Post, is unpredictable. Webb reported and wrote a series of stories about the CIA and crack cocaine for the San Jose Mercury News in 1996. Under a flurry of criticism, including from other mainstream newspapers, his editors backed away from the series' findings. Two years later, the CIA confirmed some of Webb's major findings.
The information needed to impeach George Bush for lying to Congress, the United Nations, and the American public about the most serious imaginable matter—the misuse of military force—is all out there. It's been reported, in foreign media, in the alternative press, in the margins. But it has not been championed by major media, and so it has not been taken to heart by either the American public or Congress. Bush and his aides intentionally lied about the case for mounting an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country. The outcome has been a conflict that has so far left more than 1,400 American soldiers dead, many thousands more maimed, and has led to the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians. The Downing Street Memo erases any doubt about the intentional nature of the disinformation campaign waged upon us to justify this war.
Obviously, a Republican-controlled Congress is not about to impeach its own president. Enormous public pressure would have to be brought to bear. But that public pressure has also been missing, starting with the media coverage. It's difficult to imagine, at this point, any sort of "smoking gun" sufficient to generate momentum against the Bush administration. Vietnam era dissident Daniel Ellsberg has been touring the country for the past year, urging federal officials within earshot to do as he did with the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War, which he leaked to The New York Times—to do as Deep Throat did with the Watergate cover-up, to leak to the press what they know of the Bush administration's misdeeds. But even that might not be enough, because there is no guarantee that the press would even carry, let alone highlight in proper context, such allegations.
We now know the identity of Deep Throat. Fine. But take a moment to mourn the fact that the courage and integrity displayed by Deep Throat would not be effective today, because there seems to be nobody in our country's major media willing to hear such secrets. We've lost an essential tool for accountability of our country's highest powers. They still lie and cheat—only, today, we no longer seem to care.
I beg to differ; it would have been reported today, probably just like it was back then.
The only difference would be that WE would make sure more than ONE SIDE was heard; we would have checked the facts and asked for sources.
The liberal media smoking weed again.
This is funny, and a little pathetic. For the left, Watergate and Vietnam was their heyday -- ever since then they've been dying to relive past glories.
Why post this garbage. No one mislead/lied to anyone. Everyone thought there were wmd's in Iraq. It is a good thing Sadam is gone. Bush may very well transform the Middle East...democracy may very well take root. Liberals have been on the wrong side of history for 60 years. Nothing has changed-bunch of sore losermans. Bush was re-elected...the American people would not stand for impeachment of a president who is in fact the people's choice (won a majority which Clinton never managed to do).
The 3 words you need to say to convince any braindead liberal impeachment is a bad idea is:
President Dick Cheney
This is what all the hub-bub over the prison "abuse" is all about. It won't just be the "abuse" of intel - it will also be the "abuse" of prisoners.
Rush said all during 2004 - if Bush wins again - they will do whatever it takes to impeach Bush.
Looks like the press is on to see if they can gin up enough support to force the House to bring charges.
to live in the past...
...and yet not learn a damn thing from it
there is NOTHING so blind as a dim
"Bring it on."
You are missing the point, "GET GEORGE BUSH AT ANY COST!"
It does not matter that Cheney would then be President. It would mean that all their crazy theories were correct and George Bush is really Hitler.
Dear STUPID liberal....
WE HAVE BEEN AT WAR WITH IRAQ SINCE 1991!
WE HAVE WAR PLANS AGAINST ALL OF OUR ENEMIES!
Reread your examples and ask why create the ground effort?
It's bad enough that we have Supreme Court justices citing foreign law in decisions, now we have media idiots citing foreign memos as grounds for impeaching a US president? When they find a whitehouse memo that says the evidence for WMDs is BS (even though that was never given as the sole reason for invasion), then we'll talk.
Quoting John Dean as a source for responsible information is something that makes this article laughable from the very outset!
I suppose that they wanted to quote an expert at lying and dissembling... You'd think that they'd want the very best, and go for the Clintons for that, rather than Dean!
Mark
Have you ever wondered what the liberal reaction to eliminating terrorist prisions would be?
Republicans control the House and Senate.
Bush impeachment = pres Cheney (or better yet--pres Rice (after 06))
No way.
Hey... these people are crazy. The MSM will gin-it-up for them and don't forget -- what counts... is the severity of the charge -- justice ain't got 'nuttin to do with it!
The story of these items which never existed now being missing is on HOUR 9.
Everything I needed to know about the media I learned from living through Watergate and the Clinton administration. Watergate was constantly bolstered with repetition and mock outrage, while the latter was twisted, watered down or totally ignored. When the press looks at itself today, 'objectivity' boils down to partisanship. It's been so far left for so long that the middle of the road is an alien landscape. The MSM is no longer capable of objectivity because it no longer can recognize it.
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