"Six ordinary, patriotic citizens with nopolitical axe to grind"

"Six ordinary, patriotic citizens with no political axe to grind [Begin violins -- ed] were so outraged to discover the truth about the path to war that they set up their own website, naming it after the minutes which had become known as the Downing Street Memo," gushes gullible Brit Woodward-wannabe, Michael Smith, of the London Sunday Times in "How the leaked documents questioning war [blogged here early and often] emerged from 'Britain's Deep Throat,'" wherein the author purports to reveal shocking, shocking new proof that Bush/Blair Lied, People Died." The Times's shiniest new smoking gun:

It was a “Secret -- Strictly Personal” letter from Jack Straw to the prime minister written in March 2002, a year before the invasion.

In the letter the foreign secretary said there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any weapons of mass destruction worth talking about and that, in part as a result of a lack of US preparation, post-war Iraq was likely to become a very nasty place.

Gosh, you think so?  A post-Saddam Iraq was likely to become a very nasty place?  At least it was only "in part as a result of" inadequate planning on the part of the U.S.  Wait a sec, weren't we just reading yesterday that there is documentation of extensive planning for the war's aftermath during the build-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom? Oh, never mind.  Who needs facts when you've got a scoop to promulgate?:

The document that seemed to encapsulate the problems was another “Secret -- Strictly Personal” letter to Blair. It was written by his foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning.

"I think there is a real risk that the (US) administration underestimates the difficulties," Manning wrote. "They may agree that failure isn’t an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it."

It's a risky world out there, buddy.  Nothing is guaranteed, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.  As we blogged here recently, GW has bigger fish to fry, like realigning the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East to enable the spread of freedom, for starters. Back to those "six ordinary, patriotic citizens with no political axe to grind":

Another website called AfterDowningStreet followed. People got together to lobby their local newspapers and radio and television stations to demand to know why they weren’t being told about the memo. There were even T-shirts made with the slogan: “Have you read the memo?” With anger over the war growing, Washington politicians finally acted [That would be Conyers' fake hearings].

Last week one US blogger, Larisa Alexandrovna of RawStory.com, unearthed more unsettling evidence. It was an overlooked interview with Lieutenant-General T Michael Moseley, the allied air commander in Iraq, in which he appears to admit that the “spikes of activity” were part of a covert air war.

Argghhh! "Finding out whether we were lied to by our government shouldn’t be a partisan issue. So how about it, conservatives? Do you want to know?" asks "patriotic citizen with no political axe to grind" Shakespeare's Sister, one of the rabble rousers. As Dick Cheney might put it, we disagree with the premise of your question. Even as these Downing-Street-Memo folks [unjustifiably] accuse the Administration of not planning for the aftermath of battle, they are guilty of the very thing themselves.  What do they envision for this country beyond trying to damage the credibility of the President?  Their blindered gotcha single-mindedness reminds us of that 20-year-old prospective suicide bomber Marwan -- "the first to tell his story before carrying out such a mission," bragged the Time interviewer -- blogged here yesterday. His words could have come out of their own mouths:

The first step is to remove the Americans from Iraq. After we have achieved that, we can work out the details.

The first step is to cut and run from Iraq and impeach the President for war crimes.  After that, the "party without ideas" -- Charles Krauthammer's words -- can work out the details.

Comments

[goomp]

Unfortunately if the"Intellectual Morons" who spout the anti Us, anti Bush, pro let the UN handle the terrorist have their way we can look forward to their stupidity being terminal for Western Civilization.

[Teresa]

Man those people make me tired! I just love how they are ALWAYS screeching about lies, lies, and lies... yet they never seem to have anything constructive to say. Like... what they would do that would be better... nothing. I know they won't, but geeze I wish they'd just shut up for a while - they make me want to sent them to their room without supper.

[Sissy Willis]

. . . and no TV. :)

[Tara]

And the MSM wonders why their newspaper circulation is down and hardly anyone watches network news and people question their motives on this war..

When did people decide that war is a game of "gotcha"? For heaven's sake..we have real live men and women in Iraq putting their tails on the line so we can hear yet more people scream "Bush lied ! People died !" ?

I am so sick of this.