Eric Margolis : THE DOWNING STREET MEMO

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[Zepps_News] Eric Margolis : THE DOWNING STREET MEMO

 

 

http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2005/06/the_downing_str.php

 

Eric Margolis

Foreign Correspondent / Defense Analyst & Columnist

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© 2005 Eric Margolis

 

 

THE DOWNING STREET MEMO

 

 

PARIS - Anyone who still believes all the Anglo-American propaganda

about the Iraq invasion is now faced by deep disillusionment.

 

On July 2002, the head of MI-6, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service,

briefed PM Tony Blair and his cabinet on US plans to attack Iraq.

Leaked

to the British media, the document has become infamous as the `Downing

Street Memo.'

 

Sir Richard Dearlove (`Q' to James Bond fans) reported that President

George Bush had decided to invade oil-rich Iraq eight months later on

March, 2003, in a war `to be justified by the conjunction of terrorism

and weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence and facts are being

fixed around the policy.'

 

Translation: the US and British governments would concoct false charges

against Iraq to justify war. After Britain's Attorney General warned

unprovoked invasion of Iraq would violate international law, Dearlove

noted with oily cynicism, `If the political context were right, people

would support regime change.' Translation: use propaganda and scare

tactics to whip up war fever.

 

British and US intelligence agencies were ordered to produce `evidence'

to justify a war. In the US, faked `evidence' and grotesque lies were

fed to the frightened public by neoconservatives and a frenzied

national

media. The US Congress, supposedly an independent and equal arm of

government, clapped for the war like trained seals in a circus.

 

In Oct 2002, President Bush actually claimed in a national speech that

Iraqi drone aircraft were poised to shower germs and poison gas on

America. The Iraqi `drones of death' were supposedly being carried

aboard Iraqi freighters lurking in the North Atlantic.

 

VP Dick Cheney insisted this absurd, comic book fantasy was `the

smoking

gun' that justified invading Iraq.

 

The vice president, who more often than not resembles Dr. Strangelove

in

the wonderful film of that name, had the nerve this week to accuse

Democrat Howard Dean of being `over the top' for speaking the truth

about American politics. What chutzpah. It is the rarely-seen Cheney,

an

equivalent of Shia Iran's Hidden Imam, who has been over the top for a

very long time.

 

Cheney's wild claims about mushroom clouds and the absolute certainty

of

finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq made him appear both highly

irrational, even downright unstable – what the French term `un enragé.'

 

Bush, in his state of the Union speech, warned Iraq was importing

uranium from Niger to build nuclear weapons aimed at the US. Bush's

ludicrous claim was based on a forged document created by a leading

Israeli agent of influence in Washington who had played a major role in

the Iran-Contra arms scandal during the Reagan Administration. The

forgery was back-channeled to the Pentagon through neo-fascists in

Italian military intelligence closely linked to the neoconservative

network in the United States.

 

And so it went. Lie after lie. Scare upon scare. Fakery after fakery,

trumpeted by the tame US media that came to resemble the lickspittle

press of the old Soviet Union. Ironically, in the end, horrid Saddam

Hussein turned out to be telling the truth all along while Bush and

Blair were not.

 

MI-6's smoking gun memo would have forced any of Europe's democratic

governments to resign in disgrace. But not Bush and Blair. Far from it.

Though hounded over his Iraq lies by Britain's media, Blair squeaked

through a tight election only thanks to the pathetically inept

opposition Conservatives, who also backed the Iraq war.

 

By contrast, US mass media amply confirmed charges of bias,

politicization, and acting as government mouthpieces that are being

leveled against it. The US media at first ignored the Downing Street

memo, then grudgingly devoting a few low-key stories to the dramatic

revelation. The cowardly White House press corps never dared raise the

issue until a British journalist for Reuters committed lese majesté by

asking the president about it. Such is the depths to which the US

mainstream media has sunk.

 

At the same time, front-pages of major newspapers and TV broadcasts

featured revelation about the identity of the Nixon era's `Deep Throat'

leaker of secrets. He turned out to be part of a self-serving cabal of

Nixon-haters rather than a selfless patriot as long believed.

 

In retrospect, President Nixon's misdeeds appear minor compared to

George Bush's illegal, unnecessary and catastrophic war against Iraq

that has so far killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and Americans, cost

US $275 billion(plus another $55 billion for Afghanistan), and made

America's name mud around the globe.

 

But as Nazi leader Herman Goering correctly observed, a government can

get way with anything provided it scares its citizens enough.

 

France and Germany both knew from their own intelligence services that

the Anglo-US accusations against Iraq were nonsense and that Saddam was

no threat to anyone save his own miserable people. That is why they

refused to join the war in spite of US threats and tempting offers of

oil concessions in postwar Iraq. Britain, by contrast, readily accepted

and joined in concocting justification for war – viz, the notorious

`Dodgy Memo' about Iraq from HM Government that turned out to be a

pastiche of erroneous press reports and a plagiarized graduate thesis

that was also dead wrong.

 

The US ordered its intelligence services to shut their eyes, toe the

White House party line, and accept as genuine patently false reports

about the Mideast from known disinformers and self-serving sources that

wanted to see Iraq destroyed.

 

Two well-known crooks, Iranian Manuchar Gorbanifar and Iraqi exile

Ahmad

Chalabi, both with close ties to Israel's Mossad and the neocon

network,

became the principal source of lies about Iraq for the White House and

US media, including the august New York Times.

 

But Bush and Blair were not the only dissemblers . Vice President Dick

Cheney, CIA boss George Tenet, aka `Dr Yes,' Colin Powell, Condoleeza

Rice, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and other senior

administration officials who tirelessly promoted falsehoods over Iraq

and war fever were just as guilty of deceiving and misleading the

American people and Congress.

 

The only Anglo-US official who can hold his head high over the sordid

Iraq scandal is Britain's former Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, who

refused to be party to the Blair-Bush lies and resigned. No senior US

official had the guts or ethics to follow Cook's admirable example.

 

copyright Eric S. Margolis 2005

 

Posted by Eric Margolis on June 13, 2005 02:10 PM

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