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• Tuesday, June 19, 2007 06:34 AM

  The Downing Street Memo Blackout Perfectly Explained

  Cohen:

  It is often best to keep the lights off.

  What a perfect explanation for why the US press has studiously ignored this for well over two years now:

  As originally reported in the The Sunday Times, May 1, 2005

  SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

  DAVID MANNING
  From: Matthew Rycroft
  Date: 23 July 2002
  S 195 /02

  cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

  IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY....

  C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

  http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1

  It's not just that, as Cohen writes:

  As any prosecutor knows -- and Martha Stewart can attest -- white-collar types tend to have a morbid fear of jail.

  When it comes to the President--if he's a Republican--every citizen of Versailles has a morbid fear of the mere word i-m-p-e-a-c-h-m-e-n-t, and thus cannot talk about anything that might reasonably lead in that direction.

  In such cases, their motto becomes:

  It is always imperative to keep the lights off.

  —Paul Rosenberg Read Paul Rosenberg's other letters
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