Electra

The two meet as Orestes is led to Iphigenia to be prepared for sacrifice to the Egyptian Gods. ([48]) Furthermore, the grammatical conjunction 'but' implies a contradiction which would only be grammatically correct if the phrase 'fixed around' was the American definition. He claims that Orestes is led by the Furies to Taurus in ancient Egypt, where his sister Iphigenia is being held. Others have dismissed this criticism, saying the British usage of the term is the same as in the U.S., and that the meaning of "fixed around" in the memo is clear from context. In Iphigenia at Taurus, Euripides tells the tale somewhat differently. This view was seconded by the writer Christopher Hitchens. The Erinyes demand their victim; he pleads the orders of Apollo; the votes of the judges are equally divided, and Athena gives her casting vote for acquittal. " 'Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than altered to fit the policy," he says.

At last Athena (also known as Areia) receives him on the Acropolis of Athens and arranges a formal trial of the case before twelve Attic judges. Robin Niblett, a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, says it would be easy for Americans to misunderstand the reference to intelligence being "fixed around" Iraq policy. Even though Apollo (to whom the Delphic temple was dedicated) had ordered him to do the deed, he is powerless to protect Orestes from the consequences of his actions. [47]. Orestes takes refuge in the temple at Delphi. It's an entirely different document that describes legal authorization for the invasion of Iraq under standing UN resolutions. Electra is not hounded by the Erinyes. (At this link, view this PDF: 07.03.03: Attorney general's full advice on Iraq war (pdf)) This PDF detailed Lord Goldsmith’s confidential advice on the legality of the Iraq war and does not match the text of any of the alleged Downing Street Memos.

Orestes, after the deed (sometimes with Electra helping), goes mad, and is pursued by the Erinyes, or Furies, whose duty it is to punish any violation of the ties of family piety. It turned out to actually be a picture of a document found in an 28 April 2005 Guardian Unlimited story. According to Aeschylus, he met Electra before the tomb of Agamemnon, where both had gone to perform rites to the dead; a recognition took place, and they arranged how Orestes should accomplish his revenge. [46]. In his twentieth year, Orestes was ordered by the Delphic oracle to return home and avenge his father's death. On Thursday, 16 June 2005 Reuters mislabelled a photograph of what it claimed was "a copy of the Downing Street Memo". 25), Orestes was saved by his old nurse or by Electra, and was taken to Phanote on Mount Parnassus, where King Strophius took charge of him. [45].

According to Pindar (Pythia, xi. That article is called "Failure is not an option, but it doesn't mean they will avoid it". 542). The 18 September 2004 Daily Telegraph article contains the only known reproductions of the original memos (scanned from a photocopy). 306; X. [44]. (Odyssey, iii. PDF format.

Eight years later Electra returned from Athens with her brother, Orestes. [43]. Aegisthus and Clytemnestra also killed Cassandra, Agamemnon's war prize, a prophet priestess of Troy. This document originated in the Hutton Inquiry and can be viewed here. According to the story, Electra (daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) was absent from Mycenae when her father, King Agamemnon, returned from the Trojan War and was murdered by Aegisthus, Clytemnestra's lover, and/or by Clytemnestra herself. Another document was the Rycroft email, showing the author of the Downing Street Memo actually believed that Saddam should be removed because of a threat by Iraq getting WMDs into the hands of terrorists. In Greek mythology, several persons were named Electra (also spelled Elektra):. A further document, a July 21, 2002, cabinet office paper titled "Conditions for Military Action", which is a briefing paper for the meeting of which the Downing Street Memo is the minutes, was published (with the last page missing) by The Sunday Times on June 12, 2005.[42].

locale. The six documents are available in PDF form from the Think Progress web site.[41]. Ellie (movie), B-movie which transfers the story to a Southern U.S. The Los Angeles Times published an article on June 15, 2005, describing several of the "new" documents; the article says that "Michael Smith, the defense writer for The Times of London who revealed the Downing Street minutes in a story 1 May, provided a full text of the six new documents to the Los Angeles Times."[40]. Elektra, opera by composer Richard Strauss, with libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, based on his own play. Interest in these documents was revived around 8 June 2005, following their appearance in a discussion thread at Democratic Underground[39] and subsequently they began to be quoted in US media, after Rawstory and NBC verified their authenticity with Smith and British government sources. Elektra, film by Michael Cacoyannis, starring Irene Papas, based on Euripides. The file derives ultimately from the typed transcript of the documents made by Smith and the Telegraph.

Mourning Becomes Electra, play by Eugene O'Neill, based on Aeschylus. On October 5th, 2004, a zipped file (leaks-brief.zip), containing facsimiles of these documents in PDF form, appeared on Cryptome[37], provided by Professor Michael Lewis of Cambridge University, who had also housed the file at Iraq expert Glen Rangwala's Middle East Reference website[38]. Elektra, a play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, based on the Sophocles play. The documents were widely quoted in the British press immediately following the Telegraph's story, for example in The Guardian[35] and The Sunday Herald[36]. Electra, drama by Danilo Kiš. (As reported in Rawstory[34].). Electra, play by Euripides. On receipt of the documents, in September 2004, acting on the advice of lawyers, Smith says he photocopied them and returned the originals to his source, then, after the Telegraph's legal desk secretary typed transcripts on an "old fashioned typewriter", the Telegraph destroyed their copies of the originals, in order to frustrate any future police investigation of the leaks.

Electra, play by Sophocles. (6) a memo from Jack Straw to Tony Blair, 25 March 2002 containing advice ahead of Blair's meeting with George Bush in April. The Oresteia, a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus. (5) a memo from Peter Ricketts, Political Director, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, to the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, dated 22 March 2002, with background and opinion for Straw's advice to Tony Blair ahead of his meeting with George Bush in April. Alternative: Laodice. (4) a report from Christopher Meyer to David Manning on his meeting with Paul Wolfowitz, dated 18 March 2002. (Most famous "Electra") Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. (3) a report from David Manning to Tony Blair on his meeting with Condoleezza Rice, dated 14 March 2002.

A Pleiade or Oceanid, mother of Iris and the Harpies by Thaumas. (2) Iraq: Legal Background, prepared by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Legal Department, dated 8 March 2002. Daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, mother of Dardanus, Iasion and Harmonia, by Zeus. (1) Iraq: Options Paper, prepared by the Overseas & Defence Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, dated 8 March 2002, describing options available for pursuing regime change in Iraq. They are:. The documents describe issues relating to the meetings held between Bush and Blair at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch in April 2002.

Previous to the appearance of the Downing Street Memo, six other British (Blair) Cabinet papers originating around March 2002 were obtained by Michael Smith and used in two Daily Telegraph stories[32] [33] published on 18 September 2004. The full transcript is available here. Straw stated that he had not expected the question to come up. On May 18th, 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw were questioned on the memo, although neither was able to give a detailed answer.

On 23 May, when BTC News reporter Eric Brewer asked him about his May 16th statement, McClellan said:. [30]. On 17 May, McClellan told reporters that the White House saw "no need" to respond to the letter from Congress. [29].

However, McClellan admitted that he has not read the memo, but has only received reports of what it contains. On 16 May, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said that the memo's statement that intelligence was "being fixed" to support a decision to invade Iraq was "flat out wrong". [28]. He said the same thing in a June 7, 2005 interview with Gwen Ifill on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

He also reiterated that he and Bush had continued to try to find a way to avert war, "As it happened, we weren't able to do that because -- as I think was very clear -- there was no way that Saddam Hussein was ever going to change the way that he worked, or the way that he acted," again without explaining the apparent contradiction with the contents of the memo. Blair's response to Steve Holland at the joint news conference with Bush was "No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all". When the document was published, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair denied that anything in the memo demonstrated misconduct and said that it added little to what was already known about how British policy on Iraq developed. … I'm not sure who 'they dropped it out' is, but—I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there.".

Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?" President Bush did not address the issue of the intelligence and facts being "fixed" around a decision to go to war, but he did deny that he had, at the time of the memo, already decided to use military force against Saddam Hussein, saying "There's nothing farther from the truth." Bush also questioned the motives of whoever leaked the memo during the British election, saying "Well, I—you know, I read kind of the characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in the middle of his race. Bush-Tony Blair press briefing in the White House, Reuters correspondent Steve Holland asked, "On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. On 7 June 2005, at a joint George W. [24] UK Prime Minister Tony Blair denied that anything in the memo demonstrated misconduct and said that it added little to what was already known about how British policy on Iraq developed.

One of the first articles on the memo to appear in the US media quoted "a former senior US official", who, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the memo's account "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington. Several other documents obtained by Smith, and treated similarly (see below), were confirmed as genuine by the UK Foreign Office.[23]. This has led some to question the document's authenticity, but no official source has questioned it, and it has been unofficially confirmed to various news organizations, including the Washington Post, NBC, The Sunday Times and the LA Times. The document was retyped from the photocopy, and the photocopy destroyed.

Michael Smith, the journalist who first reported on the Downing Street Memo, has said that he protected the identity of his source by photocopying the original and returning the original document to the source. [22]. MSNBC has an article and a video clip from NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Network news coverage by NBC on 14 June.

The Associated Press first issued a story about the memos on 7 June. It stated explicitly,. The Star Tribune revisited the Downing Street Minutes as part of the evidence in a Memorial Day editorial (30 May, 2005). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing.".

Also on 8 June, USA Today printed an article by their senior assignment editor for foreign news, Jim Cox, saying with respect to the memo, "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source… There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). NewsHour transcript, audio and video. He said it may have been assigned to 'foreign news' correspondents and wasn't seen as a Bush story, or it may be the US media is still working on researching it (although he then admitted he had no reason to believe that). [21] Although Okrent stepped down at the end of May (the routine end of his term), on NewsHour on 8 June he suggested some possible explanations for why the US media had been so slow to cover what he considered a very important story.

He also stated that, due to continuing reader interest, the paper intends to give fuller coverage to the memo. On May 20th, 2005, Daniel Okrent, the Public Editor at the time for The New York Times, publicly assessed the coverage of the minutes in the paper in a forum on the NYT's website. [20]. The report was one of the most extensive for a nationwide publication up until that time.

One of the first reports include that topic was a May 17 article in the Christian Science Monitor. Since that time, much of the coverage about the memo has discussed the lack of coverage. [19]. The article was initially scheduled to run on May 11, but was pushed back so that it could have greater prominence on a slower news day later in the week.

After a few days of no news, however, a local reporter was assigned. Undoubtedly, many other newspapers across the country reacted similarly. Being quite a distance from London, editors first waited for articles to come across on wire services. At the Star Tribune, initial interest had been piqued after a reader e-mailed information he had seen on the Internet to the paper's ombudsman, who forwarded it to others in the news department.

The Los Angeles Times and Star Tribune put local reporters on the story, and produced early articles on May 12 and May 13, respectively. The Knight-Ridder news service produced some reportage at the time, but independent articles were limited. According to Media Matters [18], there were some early mentions in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Sun, and the Washington Post, though coverage was slight (the Post's first article appeared in the "Style" section) and primarily aimed at the impact it would have on the British elections, rather than how it affected the Bush administration. .continue to downplay [the] story." [17].

print media, saying they ". The organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has been among those that have criticized the U.S. The story had limited coverage in the USA but has recently received greater attention in the American press. The Downing Street Minutes was a major story in the British press during the last few days of the 2005 general election campaign and was also covered in other countries.

A strong majority of Democrats, and around 25% of Republicans, agreed with the sentiment. voters believe that Congress should impeach President Bush if it is found that Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq. A June 2005 Zogby poll shows that 42% of U.S. In addition to the grand prize for eliciting a clear "Yes" or "No" answer, a number of lesser prizes are offered for lesser responses, down to $100 reward for video evidence of having posed the question clearly to President Bush within his hearing but getting no answer.[16].

Democrats.com has raised one thousand dollars, offered as a reward to anyone who can get George Bush to answer the following question:. A website, afterdowningstreet.org, has been established for the newly emerging citizens' coalition. Among the citizen groups are:. The request states the constitutional grounds for impeachment:.

Bonifaz and is available here. The formal Resolution of Inquiry request was written by Boston constitutional attorney John C. Article written by Larisa Alexandrovna, pushing the topic to the MSM. [12].

A coalition of citizen groups will ask Congress to file a Resolution of Inquiry, the first necessary legal step to determine whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses. [11]. On 26 June, drug war critic Donald Way wrote commentary on holocaustnow citing the relevance of those portions of the memos detailing how the air war began in 2002 for the purpose of provoking Saddam Hussein into reacting in such a way that could be used to justify the military invasion. [10].

Also on that day, he and Kevin Zeese authored an op-ed for the Boston Globe to support the call for impeachment against Bush, citing the memo as part of the evidence that the possibility of deliberate deception by the administration should be investigated. On 31 May, consumer advocate and former Presidential hopeful Ralph Nader wrote an article on ZNet calling for Bush and Cheney’s impeachment under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution [9]. [8]. On 18 May, conservative pundit and former Reagan Administration advisor Paul Craig Roberts wrote an article calling for Bush's impeachment for lying to Congress about the case for war.

Conyers' blog is keeping tabs on the number of signatures on a petition for the campaign to re-open hearings (see petition links below). US Congressman John Conyers has also set up a blog to raise support for re-opening the Congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks, ConyersBlog.us. These lists are also linked to by a network of blogs. Every day it lists new contact information for three news outlets, to urge them to provide better coverage of the issues.

On 1 June 2005 a targeted media campaign called 'Awaken the Mainstream Media' began jointly at Daily Kos and downingstreetmemo.com. On 30 May 2005, in a "blogswarm" fueled by the memo, hundreds of blogs joined together to form the Big Brass Alliance in support of After Downing Street. Created in late May, AfterDowningStreet.org is a coalition of organizations that support an official inquiry into the DSM, pre-war intelligence, and the planning and execution of the Iraq war. The website also has a blog dedicated to discussing issues surrounding the memo, called downingstreetmemo.blogspot.com.

A website, www.downingstreetmemo.com, was created on May 13 to inform the public about the memo and provide context. By the next morning the document had become a major story at Daily Kos, where Congressman Conyers learned of it. James Wolcott may have been the first blogger in the US to take note of the Sunday Times publication, on 30 April 2005. Wilson and Cindy Sheehan among others testify.[5][6][7].

presides over a hearing or forum on the Downing Street memo in a basement room in the Capitol where Joseph C. Congressman John Conyers, Jr. On June 16, 2005: U.S. [4] As of 16 June 2005, over 100 congressmen had signed the letter, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

By 13 June 2005, the letter had received over 540,000 signatures from citizens, and more congressmen had signed on, bringing the total to 94. [3] The letter has been getting between 20,000 and 25,000 signatures a day, which was boosted by MoveOn.org joining the campaign on 9 June. Conyers initially requested 100,000 signatures from citizens (a petition) to request that President Bush answer the questions in his letter. [2].

al have given serious consideration to sending a fact-finding mission to the UK. In response to the Bush Administration's refusal to answer the congressional delegation's questions, Conyers et. No specific White House response to the letter has been made publicly. On 5 May, Congressman John Conyers sent a letter to President Bush signed by 89 of his colleagues demanding an explanation of the revelations in the memo.

However, the minutes explicitly state that the capability was less than that of Libya, Iran, and North Korea, and that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors. It has been said that some of those present at the meeting believed that Iraq might possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD) "capacity". Another paragraph has been interpreted to show that Geoff Hoon believed timing of the war's start was intended to influence American elections:. They also say that the minutes are dated at a time when Bush stated that "we haven't made any decisions on Iraq, but all options are on the table.".

Powell presented the administration's case to the United Nations Security Council, in a speech on February 5, 2003. Bush did not finally decide to carry out the invasion of March 2003 until after Secretary of State Colin L. Also, proponents say that the contents (such as "Military action was now seen as inevitable.") and the date of the memo, July 23, 2002, contradicts the official White House position that Mr. In particular, they say that the minutes indicate that the Administration was determined to go to war with Iraq prior to considerations of legality, and with full knowledge that, at best, "the case was slim." And furthermore that they selected and exaggerated intelligence so as to confirm their policy and developed a plan to manipulate public opinion.

In the United States, proponents of a formal congressional inquiry say that the minutes, along with testimonies from credible witnesses, shed sufficient doubt on the actions of the Bush Administration to warrant a formal inquiry. The main sections covering the ultimatum are:. The British analysis of US policy is also stated elsewhere in the minutes:. Others argue that "being fixed around" was used in the sense of selectively choosing or ignoring facts depending on whether they supported the already decided conclusion.

The author of the memo, Matthew Rycroft, uses this term in an e-mail when talking about an appointment, This is now fixed for 0800 [1]. Supporters of President Bush argue that the usage of the phrase "were being fixed" in the 5th sentence is a colloquialism meaning "to agree upon". The most controversial paragraph is a report of a recent visit to Washington by head of the Secret Intelligence Service Sir Richard Dearlove (known in official terminology as 'C'):. Tony Blair is quoted as saying that the British public would support regime change in the right political context.

The resolution currently has 70 co-sponsors. A resolution of inquiry was filed by Representative Barbara Lee, which would request that the President and the State Department turn over all relevant information with regard to US policy towards Iraq. Bush to respond to the contents of the document. A group of 131 United States Congressmen, led by John Conyers, have repeatedly requested of US President George W.

Both UK and US officials have since either refused to affirm or deny its content, or else have tacitly validated its authenticity (as when Tony Blair replied to a press conference question by saying "That memo was written before we went to the UN."). No official sources have questioned its accuracy or disputed its authenticity, despite being questioned directly about it on numerous occasions. If it is not a forgery, another original copy may surface. Because of this, the retyped copy would not be admissible in any court.

Hence, it will be impossible to authenticate the contents of the copy by physical means. The retyping process certainly opens up the possibility of errors or mischief. To protect the source who provided him with the classified memorandum, the Sunday Times journalist who acquired it retyped its contents (using an old-fashioned typewriter rather than a computer) and returned his copy of the original to his source. A typed replica of the memo was printed in The Sunday Times on 1 May 2005.

The term "Downing street memo" is also used to generally describe a larger body of associated or related documents leaked to the public from November 2004 onwards, which date from March 2002 through July 2002—the DSM being the most important. As this issue began to be covered by American media, two other main allegations stemming from the memo arose: that the UN weapons inspection process was manipulated to provide a legal pretext for the war, and that pre-war air strikes were deliberately ramped up in order to soften Iraqi infrastructure in preparation for war, prior to the October congressional vote permitting the invasion. The Memo went largely unremarked in the US press at first but was heavily covered in progressive blogs such as those on Daily Kos, in particular because of a remark attributed to Richard Dearlove (then head of British foreign intelligence service MI6) that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein from power, which was taken to show that US intelligence on Iraq prior to the war was deliberately falsified, rather than simply mistaken. The memo was named by the Times after the official residence of the UK Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street in London ("Downing Street" is a metonym for the Prime Minister's office.).

The memo was first published in The Sunday Times on May 1 2005, during the last days of the UK's general election campaign. . The "Downing Street memo" (occasionally DSM), sometimes described by critics of the Iraq War as the "smoking gun memo", contains an overview of a secret 23 July 2002 meeting among United Kingdom Labour government, defence and intelligence figures, discussing the build-up to the war—including direct reference to classified United States policy of the time. According to CNN, currently classified documents which were dated at the same month as the Downing Street memo, March of 2002, were uncovered in Iraq, and contained evidence that Russian intelligence notified Iraq about the "determination of the United States and Britain to launch military action." [27].

In addition, that was before we went to the United Nations and secured the second resolution, 1441, which had unanimous support."[26]. When asked about the contents of the memo by Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price in the House of Commons on 29 June 2005, Blair again refrained from disputing the document's authenticity, saying only "[…]that memo and other documents of the time were covered by the Butler review. A White House official said the administration wouldn't comment on leaked British documents. The British Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Bush has not responded to questions from Congress regarding the memo's accuracy. George W. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, when questioned about the document's accuracy, did not confirm or deny its accuracy. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, when questioned about the document's accuracy, did not confirm or deny its accuracy.

Tony Blair, responding to a question on the document, said: "that memorandum was written before we went to the United Nations" [25]. Bush. [13] [14] [15] Several links supporting the impeachment of George W. Gold Star Families for Peace.

Velvet Revolution, and. Democratic Underground. Democrats.com. Global Exchange.

Code Pink. Democracy Rising. 911Citizens Watch. Progressive Democrats of America (PDA).

Veterans for Peace. Downing Street Director of Communications and Strategy Alastair Campbell. Downing Street Director of Government Relations Sally Morgan, and. Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell,.

Head of the Secret Intelligence Service Richard Dearlove,. Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Michael Boyce,. Director of the Government Communications Headquarters Francis Richards,. Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee John Scarlett,.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Richard Wilson,. Attorney General of England and Wales Lord Goldsmith,. Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jack Straw,. Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon,.