Thank God For Paul Krugman

As usual, The New York Times's Paul Krugman doesn't disappoint. In today's column he does his part to try to make up for the willful ignorance and incompetence of the mainstream media (and, well, to be honest, that of Democratic politicians who don't seem to want to touch this...), which has completely ignored the Downing Street Memo story. We wrote about it HERE.

Take it away, Paul.

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.

Here's a sample: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

But, Paul, is it really necessary to rehash this old news? After all, Bush was re-elected.

Yes: any path out of the quagmire will be blocked by people who call their opponents weak on national security, and portray themselves as tough guys who will keep America safe. So it's important to understand how the tough guys made America weak.

Krugman also links to a brand new website, www.downingstreetmemo.com, launched by three enterprising bloggers who were sick and tired of the media not doing its job. Check it out and take action HERE to demand that the media covers this story. Krugman's article is the New York Times's most e-mailed story of the day and the website is well past 100,000 page views just today, and yes, apparently, CNN actually interviewed John Conyers today on the subject. One of the website's founders talks about the success over at dailyKos.

At the very least, our administration should be pressed to respond to the content of the memo, which does make some explosive charges (although one man's explosive charge is another man's conventional wisdom.)

This is a perfect example of trickle up journalism. If they don't do their job, we'll do it our damn selves.