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."