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Journal js7a's Journal: Does Ellem Have to Volunteer at His Food Stamp Office? 19

Journal by js7a
Tomorrow is the day that my bet with ellem is decided, based on whether the Downing Street Memos are real, and not forgeries or fakes, according to the two-out-of-three judgement of the following three news sites, listed with their most recent articles mentioning the memos excerpted below. If I win, ellem has to volunteer for 8 hours at his local food stamp office. If ellem wins, I have to volunteer for 16 hours at my nearest country club.
  • FOX News

    Blair was asked about the leaked memos, which suggest strong concerns in the British government that the Bush administration was determined in 2002 to invade Iraq -- months before the United States and Britain unsuccessfully sought U.N. Security Council approval for military action.

    "People say the decision was already taken. The decision was not already taken." Blair said he was "a bit astonished" at the intensive U.S. media coverage about the memos, which included minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting between Blair and top officials at his Downing Street office.

    According to the minutes of the meeting, Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of Britain's intelligence service, said the White House viewed military action against Saddam Hussein as inevitable following the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush "wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD" (weapons of mass destruction), read the memo, seen by the AP. "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

    In the interview, Blair said raising such concerns was a natural part of any examination of the cause for war.

    "The trouble with having a political discussion on the basis of things that are leaked is that they are always taken right out of context. Everything else is omitted from the discussion and you end up focusing on a specific document," he said....

  • New York Times (full text here)

    The Downing Street memo, so named because the meeting was at the prime minister's London residence, was published in The Sunday Times of London on May 1.

    It is one of seven prewar documents leaked since September to Michael Smith, a reporter for The Daily Telegraph before he began working for The Sunday Times. One, written in preparation for the July 23 meeting and published Sunday by The Sunday Times, warned that "a postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise" in which "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

  • Wall Street Journal

    A series of three-year-old British documents seized upon by those who think the Bush administration manipulated intelligence before the war with Iraq has demonstrated unusual staying power....

    Documents detailing the run-up to the Iraq war have been splashed across London newspapers since they surfaced in the fall and hit a crescendo on May 1 with the publication of the so-called Downing Street memo....

    The documents, summarizing meetings between U.S. and British officials in the spring and summer of 2002, appear to lend support to what administration critics have long alleged: That the White House was determined to invade Iraq nearly a year before it did and that it "fixed" intelligence to justify the invasion....

    The most politically provocative document summarized a July 2002 meeting between Mr. Blair and other British officials. Though U.S. newspapers at the time were swirling with leaked Pentagon war plans, Mr. Bush maintained he was dedicated to finding a peaceful solution. The Downing Street memo recounts a meeting between a British official referred to as "C" and his U.S. counterpart. Media outlets in Britain and the U.S. have identified "C" as a senior British intelligence official....

So, did I win the bet?

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Does Ellem Have to Volunteer at His Food Stamp Office? More

Does Ellem Have to Volunteer at His Food Stamp Office?

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  • Smith told the AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

    Since Smith typed them, therefore they aren't authentic, therefore they are fake.

    At least being a caddy is pretty good exercise.

    Previously, while discussing this, I made a wisecrack about having memos that prove that Howard Dean eats babies - that I typed using OpenOffice to protect my sources identity.

    That, obviously, is ridiculous and so

    • If the memos are fake then why haven't either the US or UK governments or the people who were supposedly at the meetings in question disputed their accuracy?

      I mean all they would have to say is "that meeting never took place, these documents are nothing more than fantasy".
    • Since Smith typed them, therefore they aren't authentic, therefore they are fake.

      You ~do~ understand the difference between transcription [reference.com] and forgery [reference.com]...don't you?

      Thought experiment: I handwrote a term paper and then paid a typist to type it and deliver it to my Professor. Obviously, he should fail me for submitting a forged paper...RIGHT?
      • Big difference - the original source in this example - you - comes forward and verifies the authenticity.

        Blair has already denied what the memo purports - that the intelligence was being fixed. So, where is the "original source"? Why hasn't he/she come forward?

        • Blair has already denied what the memo purports

          Busted. Lame attempt to weasel out of it. Blair disagreeing with what was written in the memo (as if he would suddenly come clean now, with a big mea culpa...) doesn't make it any less authentic...

          Do you really think so little of your leaders to believe they wouldn't dispute the authenticity of the memo, rather than just its contents, if they had any opportunity to do so?
          • Do you really think that our leaders have time to dismiss and discuss every forged memo from every crackpot on the planet?

            The Downing Street Memos are fake. Just like the National Guard AWOL memos that sunk Dan Rather were fake.

            Sorry - but you guys got nothing with these so called "memos".

            • Do you really think that our leaders have time to dismiss and discuss every forged memo from every crackpot on the planet?

              Listen to yourself. Just, seriously, stop, and listen to yourself. Maybe this can be an epiphanic moment for you. Do you realize what you're saying?

              They had a press conference and discussed the memos.

              Maybe that would have been a perfect time.

              Do presidents and prime ministers have press conferences to discuss every forged memo from every crackpot on the planet?

              What are you trying to defe
            • Sorry "pal," but you looks like you got F'ed in the "A." SUCK ON IT BITCH
            • Please go check the official Whitehouse press conference transcripts where the memos were discussed. The account the contain is not disputed only the meaning of what was said (and in a very twisty legalistic way at that).

              Don't make me post links.

              This is almost as funny as when several Whitehouse officials (including the President himself) admitted there was no link between Iraq and either 9/11 or Al-Qeada in the same week that Cheney appeared in a number of interviews insisting there was one.
              • You must mean this White House press opportunity [whitehouse.gov] excerpt:

                Q: On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened?...

                PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: .... let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations. Now, no one knows more intimately the discussions that we were conducting as two countries at the time than me..

    • ... I would need to see a MSM rebuttal to the first paragraph of this article [msn.com].

      Also, I would need an explanation of this White House press opportunity [whitehouse.gov] excerpt:

      Q: On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? ...

      PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: .... let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations. Now, n

    • ...is the method by which the sky can be made red, the ground the sky, and a busted septic tank into a raincloud.

      The age of reason is ending, apparently, and a bunch of people who seem to have no qualms stooping to statements like this are running the country.

      I guess it makes sense. The truth has always been harder to deal with. Why not tear down the house of reason and sleep in the field of fantasy. It feels pretty comfortable, in season...
    • Yes, it was tough back in the old days, before typewriters and copy machines, we newspaper men had to bundle up nothing but blank pages some days, and the newspaper boys would hawk them with pitiful cries, "blank sheets, write your own paper, two bits!"

      Back in the old days, people would handwrite things all the time, and there was no way to make a copy of anything except by transcribing it. Heck, even the typesetters would have had to transcribe it into blocks just to get it in the paper. So of course, we n
  • Apparently you won your bet with a sweep. There is also, of course, confirmation from additional sources. [msn.com] Fortunately for ellem there's even _more_ honor in volunteering at a food stamp office.

    Because I'm becoming something of a connoisseur of Roveisms, I googled out some "DSM-is-fake" propaganda to try to see how they did it, spot coordination, etc. This [captainsquartersblog.com] seems to be one well-connected hub of such activity. It's pretty thin, even by recent standards.

    Apparently its central thesis is that anything that is ret
  • I'm still in this bet. I'm just wicked busy on the Left Coast doing a rollout.

    When I get back to NYC and have had a minute I will post my response to what I think.

    Although at some point I think I had agreed to do the volunteering anyway.

    No one seems to have actually proved ANYTHING about them and I did stipulate that "Fake but Real" wasnt going to count. But let me have time to read the stuff I'm just really crazy busy right now... K?
  • Nothing.

    Nothing has changed. The memos, as a fact are fake. Their content is what is in question, and it is still in question.

    No one has bothered to prove their authenticity or their lack thereof. It seems this story has died a quiet boring death.

    So to this point I'd say I won the bet. Only because I never felt like the honus was on me to prove anything. The 3 sources dropped this story and never looked back at it.

    The fact is when you have "transcribed" or faked documents the content is meaningless. T
    • Well, none of the three news sources took an explicit stand.

      But the Blair press availability answer referring to the memo without questioning its authenticity, only claiming that the facts were not being fixed, saying nothing of the intelligence, has me convinced that I won in spirit.

      But I didn't win by the terms we agreed on. None of the news sources ever made a statment on the authenticity.

      So, this is what I think you should do: Volunteer for yourself and improve your own life some way that you ha

      • That's hysterical... You lose the bet and 35USD!

        I hate to say b/c I know it's not all of them but Lawyers have really fucked things up when you can't even volunteer your services anymore. To "teach" basic computing (up to web page creation) at the local Library is a Kafka-esque maze of forms and triplicate and omg if you don't want to be paid...

        On the self improvement tack I have been thinking about looking into one of the (many) Organize Yourself thingies out there. David Allen, maybe?

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