The Memo Comes In From the Cold

"Bush started out by suggesting that the memo wasn't credible because British media had 'dropped it out in the middle of his [Blair's] race.' Skipping any discussion of the intelligence, Bush said he had not settled on war from the start. 'There's nothing farther from the truth,' he asserted. 'My conversations with the prime minister was, how can we do this peacefully?' "

The question about the memo came from Reuters White House correspondent Steve Holland. As I noted yesterday , any reporter asking about the memo was eligible for a $1,000 reward being offered by a group of liberal Web activists .

But Milbank writes: "Holland, a consummate professional, wasn't trying to satisfy the wing nuts -- 'good grief,' he said when told later about the prize money -- and won't be collecting. But his query ended a slightly strange episode in the American media in which the potentially explosive report out of London had become a seldom acknowledged elephant in the room."

Mark Memmott , writing in USA Today, acknowledges the widespread reticence among the media -- including his own newspaper -- to cover the story until now.

"The memo is said by some of the president's sharpest critics, such as Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, to be strong evidence that Bush decided to go to war and then looked for evidence to support his decision. . . .

"USA TODAY chose not to publish anything about the memo before today for several reasons, says Jim Cox, the newspaper's senior assignment editor for foreign news. 'We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source,' Cox says. 'There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing.' "

My washingtonpost.com colleague Jefferson Morley shared his thoughts about the lack of coverage in his Live Online yesterday.

Climate Changes I

Andrew C. Revkin writes in the New York Times: "A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents."

Reminds me quite a bit of this 2003 story by Revkin and Katharine Q. Seelye .

Climate Changes II

John Vidal writes in the Guardian: "President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian. . . .

"In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's 'active involvement' in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable. . . .

"Until now Exxon has publicly maintained that it had no involvement in the US government's rejection of Kyoto. But the documents, obtained by Greenpeace under US freedom of information legislation, suggest this is not the case.