LETTER TO LA TIMES: Why did you downplay Brit Iraq memo?

[yurbud]

The LA Times finally ran the British memo that revealed the Bush administration had admitted to Tony Blair that "facts were being fixed around the policy" to cook up the case for war in Iraq. They ran this on A3 even though it's been page one news in Britain and is leading to calls for Blair to step down as leader of the Labor Party.

Apart from burying it inside the paper, I had a couple of other problems with their story that I told them about in this letter to the editor (and to the actual editors).

Subject: Why did LA Times downplay Brit Iraq memo?

Thank you for finally running a story on the British pre-Iraq War memo (May 12, "Indignation Grows in U.S. Over British Prewar Documents"), but your coverage seemed designed to dismiss the story's significance rather than explain it.

The very subtitle of your headline understates why there's indignation about the memo. It's not primarily that Bush didn't try diplomacy but that "facts were fixed around the policy," "Iraq wasn't a threat to her neighbors," and "the case was thin." That's lying.

The memo makes it clear Bush lied to us about the threat. Why is it so hard to put the part that's news in the headline or first paragraph?

You also inexplicably seem to be trying to torpedo your own story by both lying that reaction in Britain was mild and implying that it therefore should be here too.

Tony Blair lost more than half his seats in Parliament, and members of his own party are asking him to step down as Prime Minister almost exclusively over his Iraq lies. That's not "blown over quickly."

Are you guys really this afraid of Bush or do you have some financial stake in not seeing him held accountable for lying us into a war that cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, 1600 American lives, over 100,000 Iraqi lives, and whatever threadbare goodwill we had in the Arab world.

This is a front page story that deserve more than your mincing "he said, she said" coverage.

Please do your job. Democracy depends on it and is dying to the degree you continue your cowardice and complicity.

THE ARTICLE IN QUESTION

THE WORLD
Indignation Grows in U.S. Over British Prewar Documents
Critics of Bush call them proof that he and Blair never saw diplomacy as an option with Hussein.
By John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writer

May 12, 2005

LONDON — Reports in the British press this month based on documents indicating that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair had conditionally agreed by July 2002 to invade Iraq appear to have blown over quickly in Britain.

But in the United States, where the reports at first received scant attention, there has been growing indignation among critics of the Bush White House, who say the documents help prove that the leaders made a secret decision to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nearly a year before launching their attack, shaped intelligence to that aim and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-memogate12may12,0,1760579.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines

[NewJeffCT]

1. appear to have blown over quickly in Britain?

I can't believe that? Is that true?

good letter, by the way.

[Melodybe]

3. No it is not true, the LA times is lying its ass off.

[Melodybe]

2. You rock!

Wonderful, perfect letter, thank you so much for writing it.

:patriot:

[Kolesar]

4. I don't think the LA Times will run that one

But it certainly expresses what I am feeling. Thank you for bothering to write your response. It was strident, but objective and not insulting. Good job.

[gratuitous]

5. Damn good letter

Hit all the points I would have made, and then some, particularly about their mincing "know nothing" coverage, which boils down to "Okay, any rational observer of this situation would say X, but since 'some people' (always unnamed) in the administration say Y, we will faithfully report X and Y, and imply that there's some kind of equivalence between the two."