From Dale Reynolds in London

      None other than the Associated Press (AP) are now reporting on the Downing Street Documents (DDD) and as you might expect from the section of the media which is 80% corporately owned, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is their hero. Blair's "evaluation" of these incriminating documents, in a very late-in-the-day defense of Bush's "non-decision" to attack, invade, and conquer Iraq, is the AP's latest whitewash.  

      In typical British underspeak, which fools no one who is aware of English language as used by some of the English, The PM said he was "a bit astonished" (as the AP report reads) "at the intensive coverage [of] the leaked memos. Being just a "bit" astonished translates in American English to: "I'm surprised, but not upset; just -- annoyed (a bit). You know?"
      Tony Blair, like the AP, wants to be seen as not taking the DDD too seriously.

      In fairness (let's say) to the AP report, it quotes former chief of British Intelligence Sir Richard Dearlove as assessing (in the best known document, The Downing Street Memo, or Minutes), that "... (Bush's) intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy (the policy for war on Iraq)." ("Fixed" as used by the English means that something is attached to something else. So the intelligence on Iraq was shaped to defend the rationale for war.)
      Dearlove's analysis, in effect a confession which Bush and Blair can't afford to make, has been quoted so often in the media beyond American corporate control that this AP "report" could not have any semblance of fairness and balance unless the quote was quoted again.
      It became the challenge, therefore, to the powers to be to dismiss the quote, and all of the obvious evidence in the DDD that Bush had decided on war before any justification for war could be made. And Blair was bound to go right along with him.
      Not according to Mr. Blair, though. He says all the quotations -- in the actual minutes of a Downing Street meeting eight months before the invasion of Iraq, a meeting at which Blair was present, Minutes which were verified by those present as an accurate report of what had transpired at this meeting -- were simply "taken out of context."
      Translation: A direct quote, without the other language that had surrounded it, arguably does not actually mean what is says.
      The one quote I've re-quoted here, again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." There can be no question, out of context or in it, that if the quote is known to have come from where it did come, gentlemen such as Intelligence Chief Dearlove were not talking about mending lawn furniture, let's say.

      Right, Tony. And the context you try to use as your defense is the very source of the Minutes and other Downing Street Document (DDD) which you contest.

      To paraphrase another Englishman: "Me thinks he may protest too much" -- by saying so little.

For more quotations and logic by Tony Baloney, please go to the AP report:  

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/063005Z.shtml