THE DOWNING STREET MEMOS REVISITED….Jonathan Schwarz is reading James Risen’s State of War and says there’s a lot more to it than just the revelations about Bush’s domestic spying operation. In particular, it turns out that Risen highlights some new information about the infamous Downing Street Memos.
One of those memos quoted Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, as reporting after a visit to Washington DC that military action against Iraq was inevitable as early as July 2002:
Therefore, one of the most important questions about the Downing Street Memo has always been who exactly Dearlove met with in Washington. This would go a long way to answering why Dearlove believed “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” Pundits wishing to play down the important of the memo, such as Michael Kinsley, opined that Dearlove may have just been talking to “the usual freelance chatterboxes” and perhaps was simply reporting on the “mood and gossip of ‘Washington.’”
This isn’t what Risen writes, to say the least.
Read the rest to find out who Dearlove was really talking to. Hint: it wasn’t a bunch freelance chatterboxes.
