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A little about the Downing Street Memo:

On June 15, The Sun's Opinion/Commentary page published a two-part package on the Downing Street Memo, a British government document that suggests the Bush administration was not forthcoming about the timing and circumstance of its decision to invade Iraq.

Reports on the memo in the British media - including its publication in the Sunday Times of London on May 1 - cost Prime Minister Tony Blair political support in recent parliamentary elections and have fueled a journalistic debate in this country.

The first Sun op-ed piece maintained that the memo, the official minutes of a secret July 23, 2002, meeting about Iraq with Blair and his inner circle, contradicts the Bush administration claims that it invaded as a last resort and that intelligence about weapons of mass destruction was honestly presented.

The second piece was the actual memo, including comments by the chief of British intelligence that read in part: "Military action was now seen as inevitable, Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The Opinion/Commentary package was The Sun's most substantial presentation on the issue since the story broke. Richard C. Gross, the page's editor, said: "I believe The Downing Street Memo needed to get out there so The Sun's readers could see it. Noise about the memo had been getting louder in cyberspace since its publication, but not all of our readers have access to the Internet."

He continued: "It was news that, in some respects, was being heard by many only as a rumor. I thought the memo - along with an accompanying explanatory piece - was necessary to help set the record straight."

Whether the memo is "news" is the crux of a growing national debate. Many newspapers, including The Sun, have received hundreds of e-mails from people challenging what they say is limited coverage of the issues raised by the memo.

Contrary arguments from serious journalists and others conclude that the memo is "old news" that simply confirms what everybody already knew.

article from: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org