By now, everyone's seen today's ridiculous
Washington Post editorial assailing those who think the
Downing Street Memos deserve more coverage. The
Post writes, "The memos add not a single fact to what was previously known about the administration's prewar deliberations. Not only that: They add nothing to what was publicly known in July 2002."
I can't resist. A force far beyond my control compels me--fully understanding the futility of the effort--to take a painfully obvious stab at this.
Front-page article by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: Democrats Question Iraq Timing. The article ran on Sept. 16, 2002. That is, several months after July and several days after Bush's "show the world you're not irrelevant" speech to the UN General Assembly.
Milbank begins with a question and a few words of background:
Why now?
That's the question Democratic lawmakers and strategists are asking about President Bush's demand that Congress authorize war against Iraq before November's midterm elections. Though few [sic] doubt the merits of the case against Saddam Hussein, an increasing number are questioning whether the timing -- 60 days before an election -- was designed to benefit Republican candidates.
In the 1400+ words that follow, Milbank attempts to answer this question. But nowhere in this 1.4 kiloword article does he include a piece of
vital background--the sort of information that should have been obvious to a reporter of Milbank's caliber, intimately familiar with, "what was publicly known in July 2002." Astonishingly,
nothing even resembling the following paragraph appears in Milbank's story:
The Democrats' outraged questions about timing are a bit difficult to square with the public record. Indeed, it has long been common knowledge that the inevitable attack on Iraq is tentatively scheduled for January of next year -- with a timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections. It is unclear whether political factors underlie this timing, but for Democrats to claim surprise now -- when everyone has known about these plans for months -- strikes some in Washington as a bit odd.
Milbank could have written that paragraph (much better and "newsily" than I just did, I'm sure) if he'd had in-hand a copy of the "intriguing"
Downing Street Memo. But, if the
Post's editorial is to be taken seriously, Milbank shouldn't have needed the memo.
I'm sure you can do this all day: pick any prewar/post-July article (on Iraq) from the Washington Post (or anywhere else in the domesticated press), read it alongside the leaked memos, and weep.
Weep at the glaring omissions of what was "publicly known." Like how the war timeline was coordinated with the U.S. midterm elections. Weep that there were no statements from top-level government officials about how there had been, "little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Weep that in an August, 2002 Newsweek piece--about how Wolfowitz berated an FBI agent for having no evidence that Atta ever met with anyone in Prague--there was no mention of how Wolfowitz himself had expressed doubts about the meeting to the British Ambassador in March.
Weep or write snarky shit in your blog, I guess. Go Conyers! (But good luck--I really don't see how anything we citizens do can do is going to change the mindset underlying the Post editorial.)
Cross-posted (minus that last paragraph) to Speaking as a scientist, etc.