Well someone in the press core got a back bone, they finally answered a question and it was a non-denial, denial. Basically, they are only calling the interpretation of the memo to be false not the memo itself.
When viewed with what has happened in the past and in England around the legality of the war this story is not stopping. If you'd like to read up on some of the evidence on what happened with American Intelligence in the Jan 2003 look below. Some 32 CIA officers in Jan 2003 left and formed a group opposing things like Powell's speech to the UN in Feb 2005.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/23/224150/262
If you want to know some background on the legality of the war in England look here.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/23/23541/7755
Now to the Breaking Story: The US like the UK is not denying the downing street memo.
More below the fold.
Scott, last week you said that claims in the leaked Downing Street
memo that intelligence was being fixed to support the Iraq War as
early as July 2002 are flat-out wrong. According to the memo which
was dated July 23, 2002, and whose authenticity has not been disputed
by the British Government, both Foreign Minister Jack Straw and
British Intelligence Chief Sir Richard Dearlove said that the
President had already made up his mind to invade Iraq. Dearlove added
that intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. Do
you think these two very senior officials of our closest ally were
flat-out wrong? And if so, how could they have been so misinformed
after their conversations with George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice?
MR. McCLELLAN: Let me correct you on the -- let me correct you on the
characterization of the quote you attributed to me. I'm referring to
some of the allegations that were made referring to a report. In
terms of the intelligence, the -- if anyone wants to know how the
intelligence was used by the administration, all they have to do is
go back and look at all the public comments over the course of the
lead-up to the war in Iraq, and that's all very public information.
Everybody who was there could see how we used that intelligence.
And in terms of the intelligence, it was wrong, and we are taking
steps to correct that and make sure that in the future we have the
best possible intelligence, because it's critical in this post-
September 11th age, that the executive branch has the best
intelligence possible.
I also believe that Scotty hasn't read the memo yet. They are focusing on the Intelligence, they have yet to deny one important tidbit....That the war was decided in July, they have yet to answer a question on that.
Think about it, no one in the British or American government have denied that the decision of war was made in July of 2002. As to the intelligence, I think that people are starting to read over the reports of investigations and they are finding evidence.
As for www.downingstreetmemo.com, I believe we have hit the right cord since some coverage has been coming in.
I think the biggest reason for our success has been not using words like Impeach and Minutes.
First off why not use Impeach.
Impeach is string a word to use when people don't even know about the document we are speaking about. It sets off a negative reaction right away. We would have never been picked up if that was the tone of our website.
Minutes, simply put no one would have found us if we had used the word Minutes, for any Idiots that claim that calling the documents the downing street memo is using Bush Speak at the time when we used the already coined phase Bush et al had never even mentioned anything about this. should probably think about what works and what doesn't. Using a uncommon term that is more correct or using the term that has become commonly accepted.
You may ask what I have been doing lately, I have been e-mailing every News organization I can find with White House Correspondants and asking them why we haven't got any question have been asked about the downings street memo. So as to next steps, well basically lets find more new evidence and not re-hash what has happened in the past. Lets also see what we can learn about the Legality of the war.....I'm sure that Gonzalas will help.....no I'm serious, I think we should be asking for summaries of Legal analysis.
Also here is a link to the original story by CNN.
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/05/16/iraq.memo/
And 7 days later someone asks a question about the original conference.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050523-9.html