“Reality-based community” is used to suggest that the person takes an objective and empirical view of events. The term has been defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from their judicious study of discernible reality.”
THE DOWNING STREET MINUTES
If any one looked objectively they would know.
If anyone used a dictionary they would know.
If anyone asked a secretary they would know.
If anyone studied judiciously they would know.
A memo is an inter-office communication.
Minutes are the real-time record of a meeting, whose veracity is checked by all members attending, and are given to all members attending, and must be kept by all attending. Minutes are the true and accurate testimony of what transpired. If a conspiracy to commit a crime happened during a meeting, and those minutes were made public, and the criminals were government ministers, and the crime was an illegal war — there SHOULD BE HELL TO PAY.
As evidence, they would weigh in far greater than Nixon’s Rosemary Woods tape. But until the truth comes out, this story will continue to be managed by the WH Press Corps, Sen. McCain and the spin-doctors. The basic impetus of this story has been to make it go away.
In the last 30 days I have gone from being insistant that the Downing Street Minutes be called minutes, not “memo”, to being a dissident voice in a only-read-the-headline world, to being a Militant. On this word I take my stand.
On this word I draw the line.
CONSIDER ME
ONE OF THE MINUTEMEN
I don’t give a flaming farthing for who calls them what. I know what I am looking at. I know why Conyers’ is taking it to Bush, and why he is circulating his letter to get 100,000 signatures. I know why he is organizing a Congressional Committee to investigate the Downing Street Minutes in London. I know why John Bonifaz and the AfterDowningStreet.org Coalition are demanding an Resolution of Inquiry.
I don’t have to ask the dKos community if this is “politically correct” or “politcally appropriate” or if the timing is not right considering the 2006 election. I don’t have to frame my language so as not to offend or upset those who have invested in a term that does not reflect the truth.
The Downing Street Minutes are the most damning incontrovertable evidence we have seen in 5 years of a criminal regime. They are not going to go away. And neither, I must say, am I.
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 06 May 2005
“There are a hundred or more people wandering around Washington today who have heard the ‘real stuff,’ as they put it – and despite their professional caution when the obvious question arises, there is one reaction they all feel free to agree on: that nobody who felt shocked, depressed or angry after reading the edited White House transcripts should ever be allowed to hear the actual tapes, except under heavy sedation or locked in the trunk of a car. Only a terminal cynic, they say, can listen for any length of time to the real stuff without feeling a compulsion to do something like drive down to the White House and throw a bag of live rats over the fence.” – Hunter S. Thompson, 04 July 1973
We need two exit strategies: one to get our forces out of that country as soon as humanly possible, and the other to get George W. Bush out of the White House and into a cellblock in The Hague. Save a bunk for Mr. Blair, too. Criminals belong in prison.
