One Step Closer to Disgrace and Impeachment

At long last, what has been at play in the British press for the past few weeks has finally crawled into a couple of major US news outlets, showing up in the Los Angeles Times and on CNN's website. From the Times:

Labeled "secret and strictly personal — U.K. eyes only," the minutes begin with the head of the British intelligence service, MI6, who is identified as "C," saying he had returned from Washington, where there had been a "perceptible shift in attitude. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy."

Now for the moment hold that statement, "intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy" with this next tidbit, also from the Times:

[Foreign Minister Jack] Straw then proposed to "work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam" to permit United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq. "This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force," he said, according to the minutes.

Hold that as well, and then read this:

Excerpts from the paper, which Smith provided to the Los Angeles Times, said Blair had listed conditions for war, including that "efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine crisis was quiescent," and options to "eliminate Iraq's WMD through the U.N. weapons inspectors" had been exhausted.

Lining up all these neatly we have:
1. Bush and company were fixing the facts to fit the desired policy.
2. The British would cook up an unacceptable ultimatum. Remember that Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said there were no WMD in Iraq, so Straw knew Hussein would refuse inspections beyond a certain point.
3. Public opinion would be shaped accordingly, which was probably easier than they expected with our kneepad news media.
4. This occurred on 23 July 2002, eight months before the invasion.
5. Subsequent to this report, Bush repeatedly denied the plan or desire to invade Iraq and declared that he wished to explore all avenues, exhaust every option, leaving war as a last resort.

The Bushits have denied all this, of course, despite having continually shifted the reasons for war as each lie was exposed (WMD, nukes, mobile chemical weapons labs, links to Al Qaeda). They are now faced with documentation of the planning of what they deny doing. it seems, to quote Bush butt-boy George Tenet, a "slam-dunk" for indicting a sitting president, vice president, and anyone who can be stuffed back into the slime pit with them.

The one fear I have is that these minutes are a plant, to be used to lure and then discredit any news organization that falls for it, a la Dan Rather. I hope not. I hope these minutes are authentic and can be used to begin to pressure and turn key players to work up the chain to clear the vermin and their stench from the executive branch of our government. I imagine that there are a lot of CIA professionals who have a lot of payback they'd like to deliver to Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith and Libby, and this could be the trigger. Having to feel the bootheels of first Porter Goss and now John Negroponte, the spooks must be seething in Langley while sharpening their knives. If there's anything I learned in my stint in the military, it was don't fuck with intelligence people. Cheney is probably public enemy number one in their books these days.

Let's hope that the tipping point is reached quickly and decisively so that even the sincerest bootlickers in the mainstream media will have to pick up the thread, not because they are courageous journalists but because they are gutless cowards who will run when their masters begin to fall. Count on your pretty boys and girls on cable TV to suddenly discover the story as if it's news to them.

Thanks to the LA Times and CNN for at least having the guts to put the story where some Americans might see it.