That darn (Downing Street) memo
Rep. John Conyers - who I mentioned in the previous post was charging cable news media with giving the Bush Administration "a free pass" - also appeared on Monday's Diane Rehm show. (More below.)
Rehm's show focuses on Tony Blair's visit to Washington this week to meet President Bush, and "some of the issues likely to be on their agenda including the war in Iraq, aid to Africa and the upcoming G-8 summit." Rehm's guests were both Brits: Martin Walker, editor in chief, United Press International (representing a center-left UK perspective); and Adrian Wooldridge, Washington correspondent of The Economist and author of "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America".
On Iraq: Interestingly, Martin Walker said that although the Downing Street memo story has been underplayed in the U.S., it was also a "one-day wonder" of a story in Britain during the election campaign, and then "faded away". Walker sits on the fence a bit over whether he thinks Blair and Bush actually "lied" over Iraq - it all depends on whether you believe that they both knew that they were going to go to war in 2002. Walker also suggests that the memo "is not a smoking gun - or if it is a smoking gun, then Bush's fingerprints aren't on it." As a foreign government document, the memo does have British fingerprints on it, thinks Walker, but not American.
The discussion is quite interesting, especially as Walker tries to parse out the events leading up to war, and whether what Bush and Cheney said and did actually ammounted to "lying." Finally, Rehm asks both her guests flat out whether they thought the Bush adminsitration lied to the American people. Martin Walker gives a "sort of" answer, while Wooldridge, when pressed, answered "to some extent".
On aid to Africa: They discuss differences between Blair and Bush over Blair's "big idea" to eliminate extreme poverty through 100% debt relief, and jump starting a massive increase of aid to Africa, partly through selling off some of the IMF's 3,200 tons of gold. Bush seems to be not interested. A possible UK-US split? Watch this space.
On global warming: Adrian Wooldridge seems to think that Bush now accepts that his handling of the Kyoto Treaty was a "public relations disaster", and that he might be more inclined to throw the rest of the world a bone over global warming.
Back to John Conyers (here's his web page, btw.) After these compelling exchanges, Conyers came on (by phone) to discuss the "fixing" of intelligence to go to war in Iraq. Unfortunately he's not a particularly effective media speaker. Also - and this was quite funny - the congressman's appearance on Rehm's show came immediately after Martin Walker had commented that the real problem (and why no-one can score a hit on Bush while Clinton was excoriated for his duplicity over Monica Lewinsky) is that there is still no serious political opposition to Bush, and Congress is a bunch of "pussycats"! Conyers' heart is in the right place, but his performance took some of the oxygen out of what had been up to then a good discussion.
Rehm's show focuses on Tony Blair's visit to Washington this week to meet President Bush, and "some of the issues likely to be on their agenda including the war in Iraq, aid to Africa and the upcoming G-8 summit." Rehm's guests were both Brits: Martin Walker, editor in chief, United Press International (representing a center-left UK perspective); and Adrian Wooldridge, Washington correspondent of The Economist and author of "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America".
On Iraq: Interestingly, Martin Walker said that although the Downing Street memo story has been underplayed in the U.S., it was also a "one-day wonder" of a story in Britain during the election campaign, and then "faded away". Walker sits on the fence a bit over whether he thinks Blair and Bush actually "lied" over Iraq - it all depends on whether you believe that they both knew that they were going to go to war in 2002. Walker also suggests that the memo "is not a smoking gun - or if it is a smoking gun, then Bush's fingerprints aren't on it." As a foreign government document, the memo does have British fingerprints on it, thinks Walker, but not American.
The discussion is quite interesting, especially as Walker tries to parse out the events leading up to war, and whether what Bush and Cheney said and did actually ammounted to "lying." Finally, Rehm asks both her guests flat out whether they thought the Bush adminsitration lied to the American people. Martin Walker gives a "sort of" answer, while Wooldridge, when pressed, answered "to some extent".
On aid to Africa: They discuss differences between Blair and Bush over Blair's "big idea" to eliminate extreme poverty through 100% debt relief, and jump starting a massive increase of aid to Africa, partly through selling off some of the IMF's 3,200 tons of gold. Bush seems to be not interested. A possible UK-US split? Watch this space.
On global warming: Adrian Wooldridge seems to think that Bush now accepts that his handling of the Kyoto Treaty was a "public relations disaster", and that he might be more inclined to throw the rest of the world a bone over global warming.
Back to John Conyers (here's his web page, btw.) After these compelling exchanges, Conyers came on (by phone) to discuss the "fixing" of intelligence to go to war in Iraq. Unfortunately he's not a particularly effective media speaker. Also - and this was quite funny - the congressman's appearance on Rehm's show came immediately after Martin Walker had commented that the real problem (and why no-one can score a hit on Bush while Clinton was excoriated for his duplicity over Monica Lewinsky) is that there is still no serious political opposition to Bush, and Congress is a bunch of "pussycats"! Conyers' heart is in the right place, but his performance took some of the oxygen out of what had been up to then a good discussion.
posted by hdougie at 2:40 PM
1 Comments:
The more I read about this, the madder I get; thanks *a lot*, guys. ;)
The Downing Street memo story is ALL OVER THE PLACE in liberal blogland (Salon, Daily Kos, the Nation just posted a story yesterday), but there have only been a few little peeps on the cable news channels. Contrast this with the play the Swift Boat Vets were able to get for their story/campaign ad/book/movie during the last election. Why is it that liberals seem to lack this "bridge" between the buzzing blogosphere and the mainstream media outlets where most of America still gets its news?
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