As I noted in my earlier
diary, righty blogs and media have been relatively silent on the Downing Street memo. But as the story continues to gather steam, they'll inevitably be forced to speak up. We need to be ready to bulldoze the crap they'll be excreting. A very good set of rebuttals can be found
here. Below are some further points to support and extend that work. There's nothing new here, but hopefully this is a concise package of some especially helpful resources which might be somewhat overlooked.
Bush lied repeatedly, telling us he hadn't yet made up his mind
DSM (along with many other resources, as I explain below) shows that long before he invaded, Bush had made up his mind to do so. Yet Bush lied repeatedly, claiming he hadn't yet decided, that war was only a last resort, and that war could be avoided if Saddam simply disarmed. This is well-documented by Think Progress. (Of course this was a catch-22: for Saddam to "disarm" meant surrendering his WMDs, which didn't exist. So Saddam's failure to present WMD, and the UN's failure to find any, was used by Bush as "proof" that Saddam had WMD which were simply well-hidden.)
Part of the lie is that Bush claimed that war could be averted if Saddam simply disarmed, at the same time there were many indications that Bush was committed to regime change by force, regardless of the question of disarmament.
Knight-Ridder did an excellent job covering the rush to war, including many examples of intelligence being manipulated, and many early indications that Bush had made a firm decision to invade (even while he was claiming otherwise). A summary of very helpful articles is here. (Credit is due to this diary.)
For an indispensable summary of various BushCo lies about the war, see this excellent work by CAP (link).
Many indications that politically-incorrect intelligence findings were squelched
Bush's surrogates (example) are trying to claim that the question of manipulated intelligence has been settled by the Senate report (here or here) which said it found no evidence that the administration tried to "coerce" analysts. However, manipulation comes in many forms, and there are numerous indications that politically-incorrect analysis was squelched. This is well-documented in the K-R series mentioned above. See also this and this.
In other words, there are many reports that are highly consistent with what DSM indicates, that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
The plan to invade Iraq goes back many years
In January 1998 a group of neocons (including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and Bolton) urged Clinton to invade Iraq (see PNAC letter here). They didn't use the word "invade," but they insisted on the importance of "removing Saddam's regime from power," and they called for "a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing." It's interesting to note that this letter says nothing whatsover about spreading freedom or democracy. If focuses completely on Saddam's ostensible WMD as a security threat. (Incidentally, Bush's famous pre-war address also focused mostly on WMD, although, unlike the 1998 PNAC letter, it does have a few words of lip-service regarding the "power of freedom." Also focusing very heavily on WMD fear-mongering, and with only passing mention of "freedom," was the prewar SOTU.)
In September 2000 PNAC issued a report called "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (pdf). This report states "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." About a year later PNAC had its "new Pearl Harbor," and these folks wasted no time exploiting the opportunity to achieve goals that had already been set long before. Bush's push for war needs to be seen in the context of this long-term intention to invade Iraq.
Bolton is a very timely and convenient illustration of the DSM phenomenon
Bolton is a poster-boy example of the efforts BushCo made to manipulate intelligence in order to support a marketing campaign for the war. See this and this.
Also recall how Bolton did a hatchet job on Bustani, "because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad ... that might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war" (link).
Also see this piece ("Bolton and the Art of Cooking Intelligence") by Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA/State Dept. official (bio).
As long as Bolton's nomination is in limbo, MSM will continue to discuss him. We should take every opportunity to point out that the Bolton and DSM stories are inextricably intertwined (as the Guardian recognized when it wrote "the Iraq connection to the OPCW affair comes as fresh evidence surfaces that the Bush administration was intent from early on to pursue military and not diplomatic action against Saddam Hussein's regime"). The Bolton/DSM connection was also made in a Palm Beach Post editorial. We need to remind the press that it makes no sense to discuss Bolton without also mentioning DSM (or vice versa, for that matter).
BushCo is falsely claiming that Saddam was failing to disarm and cooperate with the UN
This aforementioned example says "of course Saddam could have simply cooperated with the U.N. and denied the Coalition any pretext for intervening; was it the Coalition's fault that he reverted to type and disregarded the U.N. resolution?" Nonsense. There are many indications that Saddam was cooperating. See this example ("Experts saying Iraq doing best to disarm"). That article is from Global Policy Forum, which is an excellent and comprehensive resource on the road to war (among other things).
Those who dispute the meaning of the word "fixed" are ignoring the word "but."
DSM says "but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Some on the right are twisting themselves into knots trying to argue some imaginative definition of the word "fixed." Their problem is that they also need to somehow redefine or explain away the word "but."