Minutes Not Memo -- NO MORE BUSHSPEAK !!

The new Public Editor of the New York Times has made a major strike towards truth in reporting.  He is the first journalist, since the story broke in the US to address the importance of the Downing Street minutes.  On the twist of a word, this story almost got lost.  Not just to the public, but to editors and journalists, as well.

You see, the documents released from Downing Street are not, and never were a "memo."  They were, and are, in Calame's words "the minutes of a high-powered meeting on a life-and-death issue.  Well, it took 30 days, but in the battle to break through the US media blackout we won our first word.  "MINUTES."  

Thank God you've arrived, Mr. Calame, you seem to know what every secretary knows.  Minutes are not memos.  Phew!

Why did the public and the press almost miss this story?

"It appears that key editors simply were slow to recognize that the minutes of a high-powered meeting on a life-and-death issue -- their authenticity undisputed -- probably needed to be assessed in some fashion for readers.

"Even if the editors decided it was old news that Mr. Bush had decided in July 2002 to attack Iraq or that the minutes didn't provide solid evidence that the administration was manipulating intelligence, I think Times readers deserved to know that earlier than today's article." said Mr. Calame in his first article for his new job at the New York Times.

Meet the New NYT Public Editor

I have been on a rant for 30 days to win this word back from the dumbing down of George Bush's lexicon of banality.  There are a few dKossacks who are almost as fixated as I am.  But it is a point of law.  Those of us who are going to go the distance will see this case end up in a court of law.  You see, you can't take a memo into court the way you can minutes, they do not carry the same legal weight.  

Here's an article that gives a good insight on what has been happening to this story while people have been trying to get their heads around the concept of minutes, not memo.

Media Coverage of Intelligence Manipulation Reflects Public Acceptance of Imperial Presidency

Delayed for two weeks after first reported and buried in the back pages of most major U.S. newspapers is the blockbuster story that key players in the British government believed the case for the invasion of Iraq was "thin" and that the Bush administration was manipulating intelligence to provide a rationale for an aggressive U.S. policy. In contrast, a merely symbolic and exhortative visit to Iraq by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is headline news in the same papers. The media coverage of those two stories--in inverse proportion to their importance--is a symptom of the decline of the republic and the ascension of the imperial presidency.

Ivan Eland; The Independent; May 16, 2005

Gentle Readers, please note:

"I was Program Coordinator for a business association for awhile, and the Executive director and I nearly had a knock-down, drag out fight in the conference room one day, over this very issue. She had missed a committee meeting (I'd taken minutes), and she wanted me to insert into the minutes a couple of points she hadn't left in her report to the committee. I said "No, I can't insert them into the minutes. I can put an addendum that mentions the issue, right along with the agenda for the next meeting". And she said "No, I want you to put it into the minutes." And I said "No, I can't, Ann. The minutes are the legal record of the meeting that happened- not the meeting that might have happened if you had been there". It was at that point that she started yelling. Went on for probably ten minutes, until she left for lunch. -- Lanie, a woman who knows, see below

Now, I'll let you off easy.  Join with Mr. Calame and say it out loud.  The Emperor is wearing no clothes.  Don't speak Bushspeak, don't think Bushthink.  Don't call POW's "illegal combatants" don't call tyranny "freedom" don't call genocide "liberation", and please, for my sake, call them what they are: MINUTES.

LAWYERS AGAINST THE WAR

HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD

CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS