A new batch of British documents circulated in advance of the invasion of Iraq provide further proof of the assertions in the Downing Street Memo, especially in terms of the United States making the decision to invade Iraq prior to July of 2002. The new documents indicate that by as early as March of 2002 the British government believed the United States was leaning heavily towards using force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The British government was skeptical of the Bush administration's claims of links between al-Qaida and Iraq and the immediacy of the threat posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, yet pledged their support for an invasion. Rather than focus on whether or not to invade Iraq, most of the memos cite discussions on the particulars of how an invasion would be conducted, thereby indicating that a decision had essentially been made. While Britain expressed concerns about the legality of an invasion, a March 8, 2002 memo described how "Washington believes a legal basis for an attack already exists" and how the US felt that the military option was the only way "to bring Iraq back into the international community."
Of the new memos obtained by the British press, the one that has garnered the most coverage is a July 21, 2002 Cabinet Office Paper published shortly before the Downing Street Memo was written. The Cabinet Office Paper cites the fact that the United States was rapidly moving forward in its plans for invading Iraq, but had, at that point, failed to develop a strong plan for post-invasion Iraq as well as for obtaining a clear legal authorization for the invasion. Moreover, the Cabinet Office Paper shows that Britain supported the US plan to invade Iraq and that, as a result, it had the task of finding an "excuse" for the invasion as Britain would be focusing on the need to "create the conditions" that would necessitate an invasion.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press (AP) has admitted that they failed to cover the Downing Street Memo appropriately, citing the fact that because the story broke on a Sunday, it was too difficult to get access to the necessary government officials and documents needed to back up the story. According to Nick Tatro, the AP's deputy international editor, told Salon.com that the AP initially intended to do a story but felt that the Downing Street Memo by itself did not provide a "clear comment" on the so-called "fixing" of intelligence and that they simply never did a story as a result. Deborah Seward, AP's international editor, later told Salon.com that "there is no question that the AP dropped the ball in not picking up on the Downing Street Memo sooner." Unfortunately, given the fact that many local and regional newspapers rely on AP wire stories for their international news coverage, there was little mention of the memo in most corporate media sources.
In light of reporting over the Downing Street Memo and the Iraq war as a whole, it is not surprising that Gallup's annual survey of "public confidence in major institutions" in the United States found that only 28% of people have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers and television news. Even as informal hearings by Representative John Conyers on the Downing Street Memo draw attention in the independent press, there continues to be little more than a mention of the Memo in the corporate press. One of the leading newspapers in the country, The New York Times, is continuing to provide a disservice to the public in covering the new memos, reporting that the "Prewar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn't Made," in a highly selective and erroneous reading of the new Cabinet Office Paper, demonstrating how much of the corporate press is willing to support the Bush administration's case for war rather than reporting on the numerous fallacies in this case.
