The fix was in

A lot of attention seems to be focussed on the following sentence in the Downing Street Memo:

"But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Ray McGovern ovserves that several right wing pundits are using smoke and mirrors to distract form this damning part of the memo. As Ray says:

In any case, on MSNBC’s Hardball on June 21 Rhodes scholar Woolsey made a frontal assault on the word “fixed.” Taking issue with interviewer David Gregory’s suggestion that the infamous sentence is about “fixing intelligence to meet the policy,” Woolsey countered:

“I think that’s not what fixing means in these circumstances. I think people are not listening to British usage. I don’t think they’re talking about cooking the books.... I think people ought to back off a bit on this notion...”

...and focus more on Saddam Hussein’s “rape rooms” (boilerplate in Woolsey’s speeches, which he managed to include later in the interview).

Other pundits have joined the smoke-machine. On June 19, Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler opined that “maybe ‘fixed’ means something different in British-speak.” And Christopher Hitchens, in an article posted on Slate the same day Woolsey went on Hardball, wrote: “Never mind for now that the English employ the word “fix” in a slightly different way—a better term might have been ‘organized.’”

Can someone explain to me how this advances the argument?

Ray then talked to a number of British friends, all of whom said that "fixed" could only mean one thing: intelligence was being fixed. In other words, the fix was in.

Ray's conclusion, with which I whole heartedly agree, is that

"Given the seriousness of the issue and the documentary nature of the evidence, my own suggestion would be to subpoena testimony from George Tenet and other senior U.S. officials whose views were reported to Blair—and the sooner the better."

more links

Will The US Anti-War Movement Impeach Bush
Half million demand answers on Downing Street memo
Time to Impeach a War Criminal
Why George Went To War

Editors come to senses

Editors in the US are coming out against the war in Iraq and the Bush administration, largely thanks to the Downing Street Memo:

links for Downing Street Memo

The secret Downing Street memo by Sunday Times
After Downing Street by William Rivers Pitt
The Downing Street Memos: Building a New Movement by Bernard Weiner
downingstreetmemo.com
The Latest Downing Street Memos by David Corn
What the Hell is the Downing St. Memo -- and Who Cares? by David Benjamin
Parrying Parry: Why Hope Still Lives on Downing Street by David Michael Green
Stars and Strips Reports on Downing Street Memo by Leo Shane III
AfterDowningStreet.org
Calls for Impeachment at Downing St. Hearing by CBC News
Downing Street Memo a Growing Problem for Bush by Lawrence M O'Rourke
Democrats Cite Downing Street Memo in Bolton Fight by Associated Press
Downing Street Delusions by Kevin Drum
Hearing sought on leaked war memo by Kansas City Star
Hijacking Catastrophe -- Why Downing Street Matters? -- video
Downing Street II by Ray McGovern
NYT's Downing Street Dissembling by Patrick Doherty
His Was Not To Wonder Why by Dante Zappala
Just hearsay, or the new Watergate tapes? by David Paul Kuhn
The Kinsley Paradigm: Downsizing the Downing St. Memo by Jeffrey Koloakowski
Is 'Downing Street Memo" a smoking gun? by Tom Regan

The Downing Stree Memo: Impeach Bush

OK, I'm back, and I'm on the Downing Street Memo issue. This is an issue that the anti-Bush crowd must rally around. It's an opportunity handed on a golden platter: notes from a memo saying that the Bush administration in mid 2002 was talking about orchestrating a pre-emptive attack against Iraq.

Put aside the fact that Bush lied about WMDs, about Saddam having terrorist links, and about Iraqi involvement in 9/11. Apparently, that was not enough to keep disaster Bush from being re-elected.

Now, we have proof that the whole war was planned. Thousands of US troops died. Approximately a hundred thousand Iraqi citizens killed. And for what. A cynical self-interested scheme.

The American people should be outraged. Fortunately, there is a place for this outrage to be channeled:

The emotive and charged word "impeachment" was voiced yesterday on Capitol Hill as a clutch of Democratic congressmen, backed by distraught mothers of soldiers slain in Iraq, put together a piece of theatre that could become the summer's political drama.

John Bonifaz, a self-styled constitutional lawyer and anti-war activist, suggested there are sufficient grounds to launch an inquiry into whether the President should be impeached for lying to Congress about the justification for the war.

"The United States House of Representatives has a constitutional duty to investigate fully and comprehensively the evidence revealed by the Downing Street minutes and other related evidence, and to determine whether there are sufficient grounds to impeach George W. Bush, the President of the United States," Mr. Bonifaz said.

Impeachment, or at least an attempt at it, is essential right now. That is the only was to stop these fascists in the next four years. If Clinton can be impeached for lying about a blow job, then Bush can be impeached for lying about the war which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Vacalv Havel on Nonviolence (1986)

I've been reading Vaclav Havel's "Living In Truth" (1986), and I'm going to transcribe a part of it here word for word, as I can not find it anywhere on the internet. I'll tell you why afterward I think it is important to do so.

All of this, however, is not the main reason why the 'dissident movements' support the principle of legality. That reason lies deeper, in the innermost structure of the 'dissident' attitude. This attitude is and must be fundamentally hostile towards the notion of violent change -- simply because it places its faith in violence. (Generally, the 'dissident' attitude can only accept violence as a necessary evil in extreme situations, when direct violence can only be met with violence and where remaining passive would in effect mean supporting violence: let us recall, for example, that the blindness of European pacifism, was one of the factors that prepared the ground for the Second World War.) As I have already mentioned, 'dissidents' tend to be sceptical about political thought based on faith that profound social changes can only be achieved by bringing about (regardless of the method) changes in the system or in government or in the government, and the belief that such changes -- because they are considered 'fundamental' - justify the sacrifice of 'less fundamental' -- justify the sacrifice of 'less fundamental' things, in other words, human lives. Respect for a theoretical here outweighs respect for human life. Yet this is precisely what threatens to enslave humanity all over again.

'Dissident movements', as I have tried to indicate, share exactly the opposite view. They understand systemic change as something superficial, something secondary, something that in itself can guarantee nothing. Thus an attitude that turns away from abstract political visions of the future towards concrete human beings and ways of defending them effectively in the here and now is quite naturally accompanied by an intensified antipathy to all forms of violence carried out in the name of a 'better future', and by a profound belief that a future secure by violence might actually be worse that what exists now; in other words, the future would be fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure it. At the same time, this attitude is not to be confused for political conservatism or political moderation. The 'dissident movements' do not shy away from the idea of violent political overthrow because the idea seems to radical, but because it does not seem radical enough. For them, the problem lies far to deep to be settled through mere systemic changes, either governmental or technological. Some people, faithful to the classical Marxist doctrines of the nineteenth century, understand our system as the hegemony of an exploiting class over an exploited class and, operating from the postulate that exploiters never surrender their power voluntarily, they see the only solution in a revolution to sweep away the exploiters. Naturally, they regard such things as the struggle for human rights as something hopefully legalistic, illusory, opportunistic and ultimately misleading because it makes the doubtful assumption that you can negotiate in good faith with your exploiters on the basis of a false legality. The problem is that they are unable to find anyone determined enough to carry out this revolution, with the result that they become bitter, skeptical, passive, and ultimately apathetic, in other words, they end up precisely where they system wants them to be. This is one example of how far one can be mislead by mechanically applying, in post-totalitarian circumstances, ideological models from another world and another time.

Havel wrote this in 1986. In 2003, Havel supported the US war on Iraq. He is now involved with the Committe on the Present Danger.

What happened?

AI attacked by the Bushies

From Common Dreams

Bush, Cheney Attack Amnesty International
by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Stung by Amnesty International's condemnation of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and elsewhere overseas, the administration of President George W. Bush is reacting with indignation and even suggestions that terrorists are using the world's largest human rights organization.



It is worth also worth noting that this administration never finds it 'absurd' when we criticize Cuba or China, or when we condemned the violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

William Schulz
Amnesty USA


'REPREHENSIBLE'
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called charges that the United States is running a gulag at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba "reprehensible," saying only a tiny fraction of US forces have been found to have abused detainees. Rumsfeld (R) fields a question from journalists as Air Force General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff looks on, during their joint news conference at the Pentagon in Washington, June 1, 2005. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

The latest denunciation came from Bush himself during a White House press conference Tuesday. ''I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world,'' he said, adding that Washington had ''investigated every single complaint against (sic) the detainees.''

''It seemed like (Amnesty) based some of their decisions on the word and allegations by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people had been trained in some instances to disassemble (sic) -- that means not tell the truth'', Bush went on. ''And so it was an absurd report. It just is''.

At issue is an Amnesty report released last Thursday that assailed U.S. detention practices. Since its release, a succession of top administration officials and their right-wing backers in the major media has denounced the London-based group in what appears increasingly like an orchestrated effort to discredit independent human rights critics. A similar campaign appeared to target Newsweek magazine earlier this month.

''It looks like a campaign,'' Human Rights Watch advocacy chief Reed Brody said Tuesday. ''There's been a real drumbeat since Amnesty published the report. It seems like there's an attempt to silence critics.''

Bush's reaction Tuesday largely mirrored that of Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview taped on Friday and broadcast Sunday evening by CNN.

''For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously,'' the vice president said in response to Amnesty's report.

''Frankly, I was offended by it. I think the fact of the matter is, the United States has done more to advance the cause of freedom, has liberated more people from tyranny over the course of the 20th century and up to the present day than any other nation in the history of the world.''

As to allegations of mistreatment of detainees, Cheney argued that ''if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who has been inside and been released to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated.''

Other senior officials have also weighed in. Like Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the Amnesty report ''absurd,'' while the military Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, said it was ''absolutely irresponsible'' and insisted that the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a ''model facility'' where prisoners have been treated ''humanely.''

Amnesty's Secretary General, Irene Khan, made the specific allegation against which the administration has unleashed its fury.

She referred to the overseas network of U.S. detention facilities established by Washington in Iraq and elsewhere as part of what it calls its ''global war on terror,'' as ''the gulag of our times,'' a reference to the system of prison and labor camps run during the Stalinist period of the former Soviet Union.

While the Washington Post, normally a defender of independent human rights groups, objected to her characterization as counter-productive, the Wall Street Journal's neo-conservative editorial staff jumped on it as ''one more sign of the moral degradation of Amnesty International.''

The Journal, which often reflects the views of influential hard-line policymakers like Cheney, called Amnesty a ''highly politicized pressure group'' whose latest accusations ''amount to pro-al Qaeda propaganda.''

Anticipating the vice president's CNN's remarks, the Journal, which also has campaigned against the International Committee of the Red Cross for criticizing Washington's treatment of detainees, added that ''a 'human rights' group that can't distinguish between Stalin's death camps and detention centers for terrorists who kill civilians can't be taken seriously.''

David Rivkin and Lee Casey, two lawyers who often reflect the views of other members of the right-wing nationalist Federalist Society who hold senior legal positions in the administration, soon joined the Journal.

In an article published by the National Review Online entitled 'Amnesty Unbelievable,' the two men charged that the organization's critical report ''says much more about the nature of Amnesty International -- and the agenda of similar left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) -- than it does about the human-rights record of the United States.''

Like the Journal, Casey and Rivkin said they were incensed at the suggestion by the head of Amnesty's U.S. section, William Schulz, that Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials who had a role in authorizing abusive interrogation practices should be prosecuted in foreign jurisdictions for violations of the Geneva and torture conventions committed against detainees if the administration continued to reject calls by human rights and lawyers' groups for an independent investigation.

In their view, Amnesty, ''is trapped in a 20th-century mindset where the greatest threat to individual life and liberty stemmed from the actions of sovereign governments. That is simply no longer the case.'' NGOs, they added, ''simply do not consider that the defense of the American population, and the vindication of each individual's right to live without the threat or actuality of terrorist attack, is their problem -- and it is time they did.''

Amnesty, however, has stood its ground. ''At Guantanamo, the U.S. has operated an isolated prison camp in which people are confined arbitrarily, held virtually incommunicado, without charge, trial or access to due process. Not a single Guantanamo detainee has had the legality of their detention reviewed by a court,'' despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that provided grounds to do so.

''Guantanamo is only the visible part of the story. Evidence continues to mount that the U.S. operates a network of detention centers where people are held in secret or outside any proper legal framework -- from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond,'' it added, noting that Bush had failed to respond to these ''longstanding concerns.''

''It is worth also worth noting,'' stressed Schulz, ''that this administration never finds it 'absurd' when we criticize Cuba or China, or when we condemned the violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.''

Bush's and Cheney's insistence that the detainees themselves concocted the reported abuses also drew criticism.

''You really don't have to look further than the Pentagon's own reports,'' said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First, formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. ''There's ample substantiation of serious abuses,'' she said, adding that the administration's ''ostrich approach'' was ''dangerous. The problems are there, and they're going to continue to pose a risk to U.S. lives and policy until they're dealt with.''

HRW's Brody echoed that view. ''What is sad is that this effort at damage control may work in the U.S.,'' he said, ''but unless the administration addresses the real issues of concern -- torture, rendition, disappearances, systematic humiliation of Muslim prisoners -- then the U.S. image in the world will continue to erode.''