John Kerry and the "Downing Street Memo"

There is absolutely nothing to the Downing Memo - It is simply foolishness to even worry about it - It is nothing and says nothing -

The kooks talking about it are the same kooks who were saying Kerry was going to win OH on the recount - They don't deal in reality - They are children.

Leave them and their kook ideas alone -

Remember this is Brit-speak and "fixed around the policy" could well mean intelligence was being put in place around the policy; not, necessarily, that it was being tampered with.

For all his international nuance, John Kerry is setting himself up to be a monumental dork.

I think the MSM has been ignoring this "story," driving the AirAmerica crowd ballistic, because they just don't want to bite on an all-too-obvious "anonymous memo" incriminating a President they have strived for five years to pummel and haven't even scratched. Nobody wants to be the next Dan Rather and CBS.

It does have that air of desperation. It reminds me a little of that guy who testified at the Clarence Thomas hearings about Anita Hill, whose big revelation was that Anita Hill SPOKE to him!!!!!! For the only time in my life I agreed with Joe Biden, whose reaction was along the lines of "Uh, that's IT?"

BTW, I am also here in MA. I was cheered the other day to see two pro-Bush bumper stickers in a row. Hey, you get your joy where you can around here.

First off, we've had ample evidence that there was not political manipulation of the intelligence data prior to the liberation of Iraq. As we reported here, the WMD commission concluded there was no such "fixing" of the facts as the Memo claims.

Actually the Commission specifically excluded any investigation into use of intelligence by the President and other policy makers. You can find this out for yourself in the Commission's overview of its report (all emphasis mine):

Second, we were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community. Accordingly, while we interviewed a host of current and former policymakers during the course of our investigation, the purpose of those interviews was to learn about how the Intelligence Community reached and communicated its judgments about Iraq's weapons programs--not to review how policymakers subsequently used that information.

Ironically, it was the President who insisted that any investigation exclude how policymakers used the intelligence they received. I'm not saying this means that the President and his advisors DID misuse intelligence; only that the WMD Commission did not conclude that they didn't. As they say themselves, that was outside the scope of the report.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.