Conyers on DemocracyNow, RE: DSM! nt

[babylonsister]

[seemslikeadream]

1. Thanks

:hi:

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Partial transcript is already up; full xscript will probably follow later

From Democracy Now!
Broadcast Wednesday June 15

The Downing Street Memo Comes To Washington
Conyers Blasts "Deafening Sound of Silence"
By Amy Goodman

Tomorrow in Washington, Congressmember John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, will convene a public hearing on the so-called Downing Street Memo and other newly released documents that Conyers says show the administration's "efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence." Conyers also says that he plans to raise new documents that back up the accuracy of the Downing Streets memo, which is actually the classified minutes of a July 2002 meeting of Tony Blair and his senior advisers.

The minutes, which were published May 1 by the Sunday Times of London, paint a picture of an administration that had already committed to attacking Iraq, was manipulating intelligence and had already begun intense bombing of Iraq to prepare for the ground invasion. This was almost a year before the actual invasion officially began. The minutes are from a July 23, 2002 briefing of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security advisers by British intelligence chief Richard Dearlove. The minutes contain an account of Dearlove's report that President George W. Bush had decided to bring about "regime change" in Iraq by military action; that the attack would be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD" (weapons of mass destruction); and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Meanwhile, this past weekend, The Sunday Times of London had another expose, showing that British cabinet members were warned that the UK was committed to taking part in a US-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal. The memo was written in advance of the Downing Street meeting that produced the Downing Street Minutes.

Despite the explosive information in these documents, they have received very little attention in the corporate media in this country and Bush administration officials have only been asked about it a handful of times. On June 7, after more than a month of media silence, a reporter for the Reuters news agency finally questioned President Bush and Tony Blair on the Downing Street Memo.

Read more.