Talk:Downing Street memo

message: I think we need to edit the "Criticism" section and delete the counter-arguments to criticisms made about the DSM. It sets up an assumptive premise that these criticisms aren't valid. The rest of the article isn't full of dissenting statements and remarks; they're mostly relegated to one section that seems to be arguing with itself. If we're going include counter-arguments, we need to fully do so, and spread out amongst the entire article. If not, we need to let the "Criticism" section stand as its own entity. People can do their own research to find criticisms of the criticisms, or we can include footnotes or something. But as a matter of fairness and non-bias, this article shouldn't step on the criticism almost to where the article just confirms that which is in doubt about the memos. Cueball (talk) 01:53, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism section

message: I think it's important to add a list of those who wrote and recieved the memo, because it's not really clear to Americans that read it. They see "C" and "CDS", and assume that they're some kind of code-name, when that's not the case. So, I propose that there be a list of individuals who recieved copies of the memo, their positions, and so on.
Such as...
Individuals who put out the memo:
*Foreign Policy Advisor, David Manning, who endorsed the memo
*Matthew Rycroft, Manning's Aide who wrote the memo
Individuals who recieved the memo:
*Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon
*Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw
*Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith
*Cabinet Secretary, Sir Richard Wilson
*Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett (currently head of MI-6)
*Ex-Director of GCHQ, Francis Richards
*Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Admiral Sir Michael Boyce
*Head of MI-6 ("C"), Sir Richard Dearlove (resigned in 2003)
*Head of Defence Staff, Jonathan Powell
*Director of Political & Government Relations, Sally Morgan
*Head of Strategy, Alastair Campbell
Nathyn 04:09, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Who wrote and received the memo?

message: "..spokesman Scott McClellan said that the memo's statement that intelligence was "being fixed" to support a decision to invade Iraq was.."
This statement implies that the memo stated that intelligence was being "fixed" to support a decision to invade Iraq.  This is false.   The memo did not state or imply that intelligence was altered.  The memo stated that intelligence was "being fixed around the policy", that is, that intelligence (that was not "fixed"; altered) was being selectively choosen so as to confirm the policy. (see confirmation bias)  Therefore, McClellan's statement regarding the fact that intelligence was not "fixed", which noone has disputed, did not answer any questions, nor refer to any content in the memo.  At best, his statement is completely irrelevant, at worst, and in effect, it's a misrepresentation of the question and the memo; A claim that the memo stated that intelligence was "fixed", a claim that, to put it mildly, is not substantiated by the actual memo. Kevin Baastalk: new 15:20, 2005 May 24 (UTC)
:And you're what, shocked and disappointed? This is the administration that brought us Jeff Gannon. Rd232 15:46, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "being fixed" vs. "being fixed around"

message: According to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4506943.stm)  on May 2nd, the day after the 'leak', Downing Street released the official document, verifying the contents of the 'leaked' memo reported in the Times on May 1st.
:No, this refers to a different leak. It was a leak of part of the Attorney-General's legal advice to the UK government from March 2003 which prompted the government to release the whole document - nothing to do with this memo. David 25px | Talk 21:52, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Authenticity of the memo 

message: I don't have time to take care of this myself at the moment, but the article probably should be updated to include the responses made by Blair and Bush at their joint press conference at the White House yesterday. See the transcript (and a link to video) at whitehouse.gov: President Welcomes British Prime Minister Blair to the White House, which includes the following:
:PRESIDENT BUSH: Steve.
:Q Thank you, sir. 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? Could both of you respond?
:PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Well, I can respond to that very easily. No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all. And 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. And the fact is we decided to go to the United Nations and went through that process, which resulted in the November 2002 United Nations resolution, to give a final chance to Saddam Hussein to comply with international law. He didn't do so. And that was the reason why we had to take military action.
:But all the way through that period of time, we were trying to look for a way of managing to resolve this without conflict. As it happened, we weren't able to do that because -- as I think was very clear -- there was no way that Saddam Hussein was ever going to change the way that he worked, or the way that he acted.
:PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I -- you know, I read kind of the characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in the middle of his race. I'm not sure who "they dropped it out" is, but -- I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there. (Laughter.) And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth.
:My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently, that took place in London happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- look, both us of didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option. The consequences of committing the military are -- are very difficult. The hardest things I do as the President is to try to comfort families who've lost a loved one in combat. It's the last option that the President must have -- and it's the last option I know my friend had, as well.
:And so we worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully, take a -- put a united front up to Saddam Hussein, and say, the world speaks, and he ignored the world. Remember, 1441 passed the Security Council unanimously. He made the decision. And the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.
My own take on this is that they're not disputing the authenticity of the memo per se, but neither are they confirming its authenticity.
:Well, Blair's "... that memo was written ..." is pretty confirmatory, isn't it?
In classic spin-control mode, they're making the strongest case they can while avoiding giving anything away to the other side. For me personally, this raises the status of the memo's authenticity to the level of having been pretty well established, since if they could dismiss it as not being authentic, that would clearly be a stronger rebuttal of its contents than what they're giving us (and indeed, this has been the biggest argument in favor of its authenticity since it was first revealed). Since they're not challenging the memo's authenticity, they don't feel they have that option available, ergo, the memo is authentic. But I wouldn't put my own personal conviction of that in the article as an established fact.
By this interpretation, though, what they're actually contending in their statements yesterday, without actually being explicit, is that the memo is just wrong: Either the statements made at the meeting and summarized in the memo were summarized inaccurately, or the statements themselves, while they actually were made at the meeting, were factually incorrect in contending that the US has already committed itself to a policy of going to war. As evidence for this, Bush and Blair both cite their subsequent pursuit of a diplomatic solution at the UN as making a prima facie case that they had not, in fact, committed to war at that point.
Which is a pretty artful bit of spin, and serves nicely to shift the emphasis away from the memo itself. They did, in point of fact, go to the UN and work hard to obtain resolutions critical of Iraq's WMD programs and support of terrorism. The question then becomes whether they did so in good faith, actually seeking to avoid the necessity of war, or did so in bad faith, merely attempting to obtain diplomatic and legal cover for a decision that had already been made. (Note, too, that it's possible that Blair was legitimately seeking to avoid war, and only Bush who was acting in bad faith. Or, I suppose, vice versa.) As those familiar with legal issues know, proving that someone did something in bad faith is a very difficult task. And again, since they've carefully avoided offering any explanation for the memo itself, they (and their supporters) remain free to adopt whatever explanation seems strongest at any given point: either that the memo is not authentic, that its account of what was said at the meeting is inaccurate, or that it is accurate, but that the statements it reports were themselves factually incorrect.
Of course, the memo itself is Exhibit A in the case that the UN efforts were made in bad faith, in that it describes in detail British (though not American) plans to use the UN in order to help with the justification for going to war. But I won't be holding my breath waiting for some muckraking journalist to point that out, or to ask Bush or Blair to account for the apparent contradiction between the memo's version of reality and the one they offered at yesterday's press conference. Personally, though (and again, I recognize that this is POV, and not suitable for inclusion in the article, except in terms of being one of the positions being taken in the controversy), I think the memo really is a smoking gun. The available evidence strongly supports the interpretation that it is, in fact, an unvarnished, your-eyes-only account of what the head of MI6 believed in July, 2002, about the Bush administration's firm-as-of-that-date commitment to go to war. And in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I don't see any reason to think he was incorrect in believing that. I mean, it's not like he was retarded or something. -- John Callender 19:06, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joint Blair/Bush press conference on June 7, 2005 

message: I think there's a lot of good information in the article currently, and most of it should definitely stay, but at the same time I think the gradual evolution of the article has brought it to a point where it's in need of some reorganizing and summarizing. And that might be a good opportunity to do some pre-emptive toning-down of some of the anti-Bush POV that has crept in, and balancing it with some material presenting the other side's position. It's not that the actual language there now is bad, for the most part. But the overall tone and balance of the article, if only by virtue of the selection of information that's currently included, is pretty strongly anti-Bush/Blair. I think that's understandable, given the nature of the story: This is one of those controversies that's going to tend to energize and enthuse the anti-Bush people, while at the same time it's going to tend to be dismissed and ignored by the pro-Bush people (at least initially).
But what's there now is getting kind of fuzzy around the edges; it feels like a laundry list of factoids and links from the anti-Bush side, and I think that tends to weaken the article as a neutral account of the memo and its significance.
I also think it's true that as time goes on, and the people who support Bush settle on one or more forceful responses to the memo, they're going to start showing up and wanting to edit the page to include their position. Rather than spiral into an edit war, I think it would be best if we got to work on the page now and fixed the more obvious examples of POV it contains, and tried to structure it to include a place for a balanced, sympathetic presentation of the other side's position.
For example, if you happened to see Colin Powell's appearance on the Daily Show the other night, I thought he gave a strong defense of the Bush/Blair position vis-a-vis the Downing Street memo. It wasn't really explicitly focused on that; it was more wide-ranging, but the memo did get mentioned, and for all that the Daily Show is comedy, this was very much one of those times when Jon Stewart takes his outsider-critic role seriously, and Powell came off as the principled guy that I still want to believe he is, and the result was some really good discussion that felt truer to me than the shouting-head back-and-forth of that passes for public debate in too many places these days.
Here's a link to the video of the Powell appearance: Daily Show celebrity interview: Colin Powell I'm thinking of transcribing it, so the text will be available to those who can't watch the video.
:And now I've done that, so if you want the transcript you can get it from my weblog: Colin Powell on the Daily Show. -- John Callender 08:14, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree and have given it a first go. Specifically there needs to be a reference for the quote from an anonymous administration source. David 25px | Talk 08:56, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: A former senior U.S. official called it "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
I'll edit the mention in the main article to include sourcing. -- John Callender 18:42, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pre-emptive POV scrubbing 

message: The Sunday Times of London apparently has more secret memos containing internal Blair government discussions of US/British planning for the Iraq war. See the Times of London site: Cabinet Office paper: Conditions for military action and the LA Times (registration required): New Memos Detail Early Plans for Invading Iraq. From the latter:
:Michael Smith, the defense writer for the Times of London who revealed the Downing Street minutes in a story May 1, provided a full text of the six new documents to the Los Angeles Times.
:Portions of the new documents, all labeled "secret" or "confidential," have appeared previously in two British newspapers, the Times of London and the Telegraph. Blair's government has not challenged their authenticity.
I'm wondering how these should be covered on wikipedia. I guess I'll add a new section to the current page headed "Additional memos" for now, though it seems to me that as more information on them emerges we may want to create a separate page under some title like "British memoranda on the Iraq war" for them. Thoughts? -- John Callender 14:08, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Think Progress apparently has the full text of the six additional documents available as PDFs. I haven't read them yet, but intend to do so, and incorporate a very brief summary of each, with a link to the source, in the "Additional documents" section of the article. I'm still trying to figure out what the sequence of events was in terms of when, where, and in what form the documents have been made public. The Think Progress folks also have another, older article that recounts how the British press wrote about some (all?) of these documents back in September of 2004. Anyway, I'm trying to get this all straight so I can add it to the article. If someone else has a clearer picture of it and is willing to do so first, that would be nice. -- John Callender 20:53, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to cover additional memos? 

message: THe full text of the memo is avaliable here and here. (Anon)
: It is also at Wikisource , as linked from the article. Rd232 20:15, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Full Text of the Memo 

message: Michael Smith, the journalist who obtained the DSM, has an interesting op-ed piece in today's LA Times: The Real News in the Downing Street Memos. He gives an interesting perspective on his own journey from being a supporter of Blair's decision to go to war to believing the memos provide documentation of illegal activity. -- John Callender 23:05, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Michael Smith op-ed piece in LA Times 

message: May I suggest that, in view of the overwhelming press consensus that there is no significant question as to the authenticity of any of the documents covered here, we relegate all coverage of authenticity-related questions to the "veracity" section, with perhaps a brief mention of the issue in the introduction and a "(see below under veracity)" or some such? (pete - no username)
: I support that idea. Raphael1 23:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Authenticity questions 

message: Is prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/290306Memo.htm this] in the article? --Striver 00:17, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: link

message: The Good article nomination for  has failed
:At 52kb long, I feel the one person review system at GA can't do this article justice.  It should really go to peer review.  My view is that it's far too long, and should be written far more concisely.  Also, the lead section is completely inadequate - it's much too short for such a huge article.
 Worldtraveller 19:44, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Good articles|Good Article]] [[Wikipedia:Good articles/Nominations|nomination]] has failed 

message: I tried to add some multinational coverage--can anyone help with this? Cyrusc 21:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: News Coverage and Systemic Bias

message: "The memo was first published in The Sunday Times on 1 May 2005..." The memos were publicised earlier, on 21 March 2005, in this BBC Panorama programme Iraq, Tony and the truth You can watch it here smb 08:56, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Chronology

message: Nickhh resists any changes whatever, and opposes all of my edits regardless. smb resists any changes, other than to develop an improved summary (with Tony Blair's comments included.) There seems no probability that nickhh will consent to consensus with smb and I? Have we reached the point where smb and I should seek arbitration? Does this state where we are? Raggz 09:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what you're refering to, but the latest revert of your edits that I can see from Nickhh is entirely justified. The edit was misleading, unjustified and badly spelled. Skimming this TalkPage earlier, I didn't feel he was the one holding up progress. PRtalk 11:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: After consideration, if Raggz believes other editors are being unreasonable, then perhaps he/she would like to file a request for comment. smb 16:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm an uninvolved (perhaps neutral) observer. If Raggz makes a case that there is unreasonable behaviour going on here then I'll look at it. PRtalk 19:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's fine with me. Thankyou. smb 20:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Consensus

message: I changed the language on the section regarding the unoffical hearing held by Rep. Conyers regarding the issue from: "The House Republican leadership, including then-Speaker Dennis Hastert, compelled Conyers to hold the hearing in the basement."
To: "Because the hearing was unofficial, Conyers was not allowed to use an official hearing room and instead held in the hearing in the basement."
The change was then reverted with the claim that: "neutrality does not mean to remove information".  I have restored my language.
It seems to me that the original language was designed to present the POV notion that Conyers' hearing was held in the basement due to an underhanded illegitimate trick by the Republican leadership.  The truth of the matter, however, is that the "hearing" was denied a hearing room because it was unoffical and therefore could not use offical rooms, which isn't terribly underhanded.  Since my edit was contested, I'm bringing the issue here. Lordjeff06 (talk) 21:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have any reference for your "unofficial" claim? --Raphael1 17:56, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  well, the BBC calls it an "informal" hearing here , SFgate calls it "unoffical" here , the NYTimes makes sure to call it an "informational forum" and not a hearing here , the Washington Post refers to the hearing as "playing house" here , CommonDreams (an incredibly liberal site) makes the point that it was not an offical hearing here , the NYTimes call it unofficial here , and Randi Rhodes explains that it was unoffical and was in the basement because it wasn't a real hearing here .  The point that you want to make is that the Republicans refused to hold hearing on the issue and, because the minority was not able to call hearings themselves, they had to hold unofficial forums.  Which might be a fair point, but at the same time, the reason the Whitewater hearings didn't really take off until there was a Republican majority for much of the same reason, so maybe it's just politics. Lordjeff06 (talk) 19:42, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your long answer. Yes it is politics. I wonder whether one of your links should got to the article. --Raphael1 23:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conyers Hearing 

message: Much of this page is a identical to http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/may2006/downing_street.html in both structure and content.  I'm not going to tag it as a copyvio because it's not clear which came first, but if anyone is more knowledgable than me, it might be worth looking into.Lordjeff06 (talk) 09:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The above linked external page  is easily identifiable as an old revision of this page.  The site owner has copied several other Wikipedia pages.  smb (talk) 10:12, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Fair enough.  I agree that it's easily identifiable as a previous version of the page.  The thing is that the other pages the site owner copied are cited as coming from wikipedia; this one is not.  The other thing, not to soapbox too much, is that this article seems to have an anti-Bush/anti-Blair tint that seems more appropriate to the external website than to wikipedia.  On the other hand, it doesn't look as if the external website has ever posted anything it didn't copy from somewhere else.  Lordjeff06 (talk) 10:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright Vio??

message: I've moved the main discussion of "fixed" away from the Outline section and into the Criticism section, which already has a subsection regarding the topic. In fact the discussion in the Outline section was considerably more detailed than that in the Criticism section, and I think both sections are the better for the move. In doing so, I refactored the prose slightly for readability in the new context. Apologies if I've trodden on anyone's toes here, but it seems fairly clear the change drastically improves the readability of the Outline section, at least. If some competent editor could pronounce on this, I'd be grateful.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.64.186.62 (talk) 00:50, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixed Revisited

message: I notice the word minutes appears in at least several several places in the article, and it's important as it cuts to the core of the issue of Blair saying the "memo" is legitimate but inaccurate. 
Minutes are an official record of an event, usually containing only the verbatim statements of those present. Any additional narrative is kept to that necessary for context and physical goings on that aren't conveyed by the words themselves. Such as "President Bush returns from lunch,meeting begins". This is obviously not the case with these documents, which contain numerous subjective additional comments by the author, of his personal view or take on what their statements meant. I think "minutes" is misleading as it implies these are the official recordings of this, not the personal views of a person who was there. Batvette (talk) 17:18, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of the word "minutes" probably inappropriate.  

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