The Downing Street Documents
The Downing Street Memo and related documents returned this summer to tell us this: the Bush Administration tells the British government a "truth" that it will not tell the American people or the rest of the world. Not only will the Bushies not tell Americans what they tell the British government, they tell Americans almost the opposite.
Things haven't changed. It apparently is happening right now:
BRITAIN is coming under sustained pressure from American military chiefs to keep thousands of troops in Iraq - while going ahead with plans to boost the front line against a return to "civil war" in Afghanistan.
Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster - more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein - during his summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month.
Scotland on Sunday revealed last month that Blair is preparing to rush thousands more British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the country sliding towards civil war, amid warnings the coalition faces a "complete strategic failure" in the effort to rebuild the nation.
"The Prime Minister was given a pretty depressing run-down of the prognosis for Iraq while he was in Washington," one senior Ministry of Defence source said last night. "The Americans are pushing for at least a maintenance of the troop numbers we have there now. Our latest intention is to reduce by at least half the number of our troops in Iraq within a year.
So the Bush Administration tells Blair that Iraq remains on the brink of disaster. Not could be. Not is sliding towards. REMAINS ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER.
But this is what we get from the Bush Administration when they speak to America:
Cheney: Iraq will be 'enormous success story'
"We will succeed in Iraq, just like we did in Afghanistan. We will stand up a new government under an Iraqi-drafted constitution. We will defeat that insurgency, and, in fact, it will be an enormous success story."
Cheney compared the current situation in Iraq to the last months of World War II, when Germans launched a desperate offensive in the Battle of the Bulge and the Japanese offered stiff resistance on Okinawa.
He said the insurgents will "do everything they can to disrupt" the process of building an Iraqi government, "but I think we're strong enough to defeat them."
Sound the same to you as what The Scotsman reported that the Bush Administration told Blair? Me neither.
So, I would say this to the U.S. news media: Find out how The Scotsman came up with this information. And find out why this kind of information isn't being shared with America.
