Downing Street Memo on WPR

Stunning Ideas Network program tells it like it is


A model for ``fair and balanced'' American media, this is one of the few public radio services that I support with (necessarily) small donations. Their internet service is very good so make it a regular link in your Real Player collection.



Everyone must, simply must listen to the May 17, 5pm program from the Wisconsin Public Radio Ideas Network. Just now, I finally had a chance to listen to it. In this program, host Ben Merens interviews David Green, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Hofstra University, New York, about the ``Downing Street Memo,'' which in black ink ``proves President Bush was intent on invading Iraq [by the summer of 2002] and that arguments for war were shaped to fit the policy.'' Click the link and then scroll down the page to the 5pm hour where you'll find the appropriate Real Player icon.

What emerges here is a refreshing, hard-hitting, deep probe of the truth -- and appropriate condemnation of mainstream media -- that is extremely rare in American media today:

GREEN: To me, the real travesty here, the real abdication of responsibility here, is the media. I just, and I'll risk being redundant here, I just cannot think of a bigger story than this: The president lies, 100,000 people die, $300 billion spent on a war, America's reputation in the world community in the garbage can, American land forces pinned down in Iraq with no end in sight, I mean it just goes on, and on, and on. All based we now know for a fact on willfully told lies constructed into a public relations blitz. And -- okay -- they're going to do that, that's what this government does, that's what this party does.

But, you know, the whole reason the founders set up the structure of government that they did with a free press was to check and balance against that sort of thing, and nobody's doing it now. The Democrats certainly aren't doing it, the public isn't doing it, and all the branches of government are in the hands of the same party. But where is the media on the biggest story of the decade -- you know, apart from 911 -- where is the media on this? That to me is the greatest violation of all.

Maybe I've been incredibly naive, and people have been telling me I have been in response to the piece that I wrote. But I'm just utterly shocked and sort of falling off my chair -- ...not because of what the administration has done, or not done, but because of what the media has not done.

There are some exceptions to the silence. A small Congressional minority issued on May 5 a letter to the president on the Downing Street memo, asking him among other things about the meaning of ``fix intelligence and facts around policy''.

For more, please see my previous post (including a note about 2002 Iraq ``gold rush'' planning). Also please visit the Downing Street Memo website.