Molly Ivins: We can't ignore the Downing Street Memos
By Molly Ivins
Published 2:15 am PDT Tuesday, June 21, 2005
AUSTIN, Texas -- I hope this is not too Inside Baseball,
but I am genuinely astonished by what the bloggers call "Mainstream Media." (In my youth, it was quaintly called "the Establishment press.")
The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have all gone way out of their way to deny that the Downing Street Memos (it's now plural) are news. Like many of you, during the entire lead-up to the war with Iraq,
I thought the whole thing was a set-up.<>
But when I read the first Downing Street Memo, my eyes bugged out and my jaw fell open. I could not believe what I was reading. It was news to me, and as I have tried to indicate, I'm no slouch at keeping up. Yes, it has long seemed to me the administration had been planning the war for months before it began its public relations campaign to scare a skeptical public.
<>I don't know if these memos represent an impeachable offense -- although I must say, I don't want to bring up the Clinton comparison again. But they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated. He used the government for petty political vindictiveness. Heck, I'd settle for that again, over what we're looking at now.
The irony of Deep Throat surfacing after all these years in the midst of this memo mess is almost too precious. Does The Washington Post have any hungry young reporters on Metro anymore? I'd say, start with: Who did Dearlove meet with besides George Tenet?
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http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/national/ivins/v-print/story/13102259p-13947010c.html