The Downing Street Memo

Tim Cavanaugh joins the growing chorus of Iraq war skeptics acknowledging that there's no 'there' there in the Downing Street Memo.

Of course, all but the most wild-eyed Bush haters never thought the "revelations" in this memo would be a major scandal. After all, most of it was conventional wisdom when the memo was released: the Bush administration thought Saddam Hussein had WMDs and were unenthusiastic about the changes of a UN-mediated outcome.

The real reason the Left loves playing up this memo is the fortuitous use of the phrase "intelligence and facts were being being fixed around the policy", which in the context of the memo almost certainly means that facts and intelligence supporting the case for the policy were being found (as in "to fix upon") and emphasized, which is exactly what happened.

However, through the lazy anti-Bush (and I suppose even more pro-scandal) filter of the media, this phrase gets summarized (as I heard it this morning on WBZ) as "allegations that the Bush administration 'fixed' intelligence to justify the Iraq war". Who cares if this is a rude mis-translation? The meme is out the door, and soon the scare quotes around 'fixed' will disappear.