Truespeak

For a while, I thought I might have to retract last week's statement about NBC. As I watched tonight's NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams and Andrea Mitchell reported not only on the Downing Street Memo, but seven total documents from the UK that the network has verified as authentic. I couldn't believe it. My jaw nearly hit the floor. Were they actually reporting something newsworthy? I had expected them to spend more time discussing the Michael Jackson verdict. I even called Mrs. kissfan over to watch. This was going to be real news. But then they ran the story and I knew that it was still the same ol' NBC. (I know, I'm not supposed to reprint the whole thing, but so what. It's necessary to make my point)

WASHINGTON — It started during British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign last month, when details leaked about a top-secret memo, written in July 2002 — eight months before the Iraq war. In the memo, British officials just back from Washington reported that prewar "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq.

Just last week, both President George W. Bush and Blair vigorously denied that war was inevitable.

“No, the facts were not being fixed, in any shape or form at all,” said Blair at a White House news conference with the president on June 7.

But now, war critics have come up with seven more memos, verified by NBC News.

One, also from July 2002, says U.S. military planners had given "little thought" to postwar Iraq.

“The memos are startlingly clear that the British saw that there was inadequate planning, little planning for the aftermath,” says Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

And there's more. To prepare Blair for a meeting at the president's ranch in April 2002, a year before the war, other British memos raised more questions.

After a dinner with Bush’s then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Blair's former national security adviser David Manning, now Britain's ambassador to the U.S., wondered, “What happens on the morning after” the war?

In yet another 2002 memo, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asked, “What will this action achieve? Can (there) be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better? Iraq has had no history of democracy.”

Rice, now U.S. secretary of state, told Chris Matthews on MSNBC-TV's “Hardball,” “I would never claim that the exact nature of this insurgency was understood at the time that we went to war.”

Vice President Dick Cheney also told a National Press Club luncheon Monday, “Any suggestion that we did not exhaust all alternatives before we got to that point, I think, is inaccurate.”

In fact, current and former diplomats tell NBC News they understood from the beginning the Bush policy to be that Saddam had to be removed — one way or the other. The only question was when and how.

Basically, the point of this story is that the British thought we were fucking it up. Fine, I understand that. But they're missing the obvious. They can't see the proverbial forest. Look at the dates on these memos. All of them from early to mid 2002. So in my mind, this begs the following question: Why were we told this on August 27, 2002?

Q Can you tell us about the President's meeting with Prince Bandar? And your favorite question, was Iraq mentioned?

MR. FLEISCHER: [...] On the topic of Iraq, the President stressed that he has made no decisions, that he will continue to engage in consultations with Saudi Arabia and other nations about steps in the Middle East, steps in Iraq. And the President made very clear again that he believes that Saddam Hussein is a menace to world peace, a menace to regional peace, and that the world and the region will be safer and better off without Saddam Hussein.

[.....]

Q Did at any time the question of a possible military attack against Iraq come up? And did the Prince --

MR. FLEISCHER: No, the President discussed Iraq in a general sense, because the President has not made a decision about the use of military action vis a vis Iraq. And so he discussed it in, as I indicated in the beginning, without that type of specificity because he's made no decisions.

[.....]

Q Anthony Zinni just came out and criticized any attack on Iraq. Do you guys have comment on that?

MR. FLEISCHER: Again, the President has made no decisions and the President will continue to be deliberative, be patient. As the Vice President said yesterday, we will not underestimate this risk.

Why can't NBC ask the obvious questions? Why is it that they are afraid to do their job? We were lied to and these documents prove it. Plain and simple, WE WERE LIED TO!

I've got to stop watching the mainstream news. One of these days I'm liable to blow a gasket or something.

BTW - I don't know how Mrs. kissfan got the keys to the joint, but I've put them in a new hiding place. She kept trying to injure me today so that she could post more stories. I told her not to worry, we've still got a whole softball season to go. She'll get her chance.