Does Greg Palast have influence, or was he simply ahead of the curve as usual? Another possibility: Someone
took note of this May 6 item, in which my
staff of thousands pointed out that Palast was “pissed off that the American press, unlike the
British press, has made so little” of the Downing Street memo leaked to The Times of London
and “splashed across [its] front pages” on May 1.
The memo revealed, as Palast wrote, “an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well
the evidence for war was a phony.”
Anyway, have a look at Editor & Publisher’s May 14 article, which
says: “For more than 10 days, the U.S. media nearly ignored it, but finally the so-called ‘Downing
Street Memo’ is finally gaining traction in the U.S. press. The Los Angeles Times featured a
lengthy report on Thursday, and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post followed on Friday.”
Yesterday WashPost ombudsman Michael Geller wrote, “I
have to say I’m amazed that The Post took almost two weeks to follow up on the Times report.”
This morning Paul Krugman takes note. He
writes:
There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the ‘Downing Street memo’ —
actually the minutes of a British prime minister’s meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials
reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to
The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war
have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it
wanted.
Krugman goes on to give the details, including the URL where the entire
memo may be read, a wise and Webby thing to do. But he also weaves in the
broader implications, as he usually does, about the war that has taken America hostage and “how
the tough guys made America weak.”
It’s not his strongest columm — not nearly as strong as the one he wrote on April 29, “A Private
Obsession,” about health care reform being blocked by conservative
ideologues who believe in privatization when it is the private system as we know it that is to
blame for lousy health care in the first place. But it will have to do for today’s fix of Krugman.
