Keith Olbermann on the Downing Street Memos

Impeach Bush: “Facts Were Fixed”

Since this weekend, when I learned that The Times of London had reported on “The Secret Downing Street Memo,” (archived PDF) I’ve had an on going conversation with two friends at work. As I’ve mentioned to my friends, the Downing Street memo makes it clear that the Bush and Blair administrations were set on invading Iraq long before the two made their case for war to the world. In fact, as the until-now secret memo puts it, “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of invading Iraq — yes, that’s right, facts be damned.

Oh, but wait, before I go on, I have to get this off my chest: why is it that the Downing Street memo is not getting more coverage in our mainstream media? I mean, if — as so many folks in this country erroneously believe — our media is Liberal and is merely out to get Bush, don’t you think that our press would be tripping all over themselves to bring this revelation to the American public? Well, I’ve yet to see any news outlet give the memo the attention it rightfully deserves — of course, CNN is making sure that we know all the intricacies of the “run-away bride” story… and, shit, we should know better than to expect FauxNews to simply report and actually let us decide.

But I digress… back to my point.

What inspired me to write this post is the following: if ever there was a reason to impeach a president is the revelation that’s made in the Downing Street memo, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of invasion regardless of whether Iraq posed an actual threat to our country or to its neighbors. In fact, as the memo goes on to say:

By god, if our press were in fact Liberal or, at the very least, had the intestinal fortitude — heh, let me just say it, if our press had some balls — to do its job, the American public would already be clamoring for Bush’s impeachment. Of course, Congress, since its controlled by Republicans, will not move against their president.

Accordingly, as I always have to do to find out what is really going in my country, I have to look abroad for substantive news coverage; which is how I happened across this commentary on BuzzFlash:

A BUZZFLASH GUEST NEWS ANALYSIS
by Greg Palast

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has, “IMPEACH HIM” written all over it.

The top-level government memo marked “SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL,” dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WDM. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Read that again: “The intelligence and facts were being fixed….”

[...]

My colleagues in the UK press have skewered Blair, digging out more incriminating memos, challenging the official government factoids and fibs. But in the US press… nada, bubkiss, zilch. Bush fixed the facts and somehow that’s a story for “over there.”

The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his cigar and Monica’s affections. And the US media could print nothing else.

Now, we have the stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands, and neither a Republican Congress nor what is laughably called US journalism thought it not worth a second look.

That says it all, doesn’t… the so-called liberal media and the entire Republican party establishment went into a feeding frenzy and impeached a president over a trumped up charge of perjury… a charge that, ultimately, was over nothing more than an affair between consenting adults and a blow job that — aside from a stain on a blue dress — did not indelibly mark the lives of thousands of American families whom had a member either die or sacrifice limb and blood for a war of choice.

Now, some defend Bush by reflexively refusing to accept that he lied, specially about something as grave as war. Accordingly, their response to impeachment goes something like this: Clinton committed perjury, whereas Bush hasn’t. Well, my simple response is to extend this challenge: appoint an independent investigator, and give that person the full resources of the American government for four years, at a cost of $72 million, and have that person investigate the Bush administration on anything related to his personal life or his administration, and I guarantee that Bush’s impeachment articles would rest on more than a mere blow job to remove him from office.