News Flash! The Press No Longer Reports the News

es, you heard me. It seems that folks are tired of waiting for the press to do their job. It would seem that The Fourth Estate (The Press) is no longer free and independent. They are the sniveling lap dogs of the White House and the so-called "Christian Right". The press no longer has the cajones to actually report news. What passes for news today is info-tainment that is more suitable for Access Hollywood than it is for nightly news.

The Fourth Estaters seem to think that we are more interested in what "the runaway bride" had for breakfast or who Tom Cruise is dating, than really important issues like The Downing Street Memo. Now don't get me wrong. The 'runaway bride' story surely affects every single man, woman and child in the country on a daily basis. So that must be the reason that they cover it so thoroughly. That would explain why they don't have the time to cover some really boring, lame story like The Downing Street Memo, which doesn't affect anyone in the least.

Well, Representative John Conyers got tired of waiting for the press and decided to take matters into his own hands. He, and several hundred thousand liberal/progressive Americans who are in the know, want the rest of America to know about The Downing Street Memo. So Mr. Conyers has drafted a letter for anyone to sign, that he will deliver to the White House in person. You can read and sign the letter at Mr. Conyers' webpage.

Okay, so by now you may be asking, "What the HELL is the Downing Street Memo? To put it in a nutshell, the memo contains the minutes to a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet, discussing President George W. Bush's plans to invade Iraq. "Okay, go on...". Well, this memo is dated July 2002, 8 months before we invaded. And several months before 'Dubya' sought Congress' approval to go to war.

But wait! There's more! The memo not only lays out Dubya's plans to invade Iraq, it also notes that "the evidence was thin..." and that "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy". There are several other little goodies in there that would seem to show that President Bush lied not only to Americans, but to the whole world. The problem is this: Over 1,600 members of America's armed forces have been killed, with an additional 15,000+ having been wounded, maimed or crippled for life since the beginning of this war. If that happened based on a set of lies, that could mean impeachment for President Bush, seeing as how that falls under the heading of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors".

If that is the case, why, pray tell, have most Americans not heard about this memo? Why hasn't it received headline coverage in the U.S. press? Wouldn't that be a bigger story than "the runaway bride"? Some people are comparing the Downing Street Memo to the infamous tape recordings of Richard Nixon. You decide. Read the complete, "eyes only" memo directly from the source that first reported it over a month ago: The London Times