Minute By Minute - We've Got Your Minutes Here

Look at the big story out of Australia which doesn't seem so big to American MSM. This via David Swanson:

Over a year before the United States launched an endless war on Iraq in what President George W. Bush told Congress was an urgently needed action to prevent an attack with nonexistent weapons by non-Iraqi terrorists…

Eleven months before Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair that a good way to start a war on Iraq would be to paint planes with U.N. colors, fly them low, and get them shot at…

Five months before the Downing Street Minutes were taken at a meeting revealing the knowledge top British officials had of the secret war plans of the Bush administration…

Just a week or two before several of the Downing Street Memos recorded U.S.-British discussions of the coming war…

On February 27, 2002 – just five months after 15 Saudis, 2 Lebanese, and 2 Yemenis flew airplanes into U.S. buildings – Trevor Flugge, who was then chairman of AWB, the Australian Wheat Board, a private corporation, told AWB's board that John Dauth, who was then Australia's ambassador to the United Nations, had revealed to Flugge the plans of the U.S. and Australian governments for war on Iraq. Tragically, for war-profiteers everywhere, somebody took minutes of the meeting.

You may not have heard about this from the U.S. media. Maybe if we all scream really loudly for six weeks you will. That's how the Downing Street Minutes found their 15 minutes of fame in June 2005. But, as we stuff our faces with dead turkeys, the new Melbourne Minutes are the top news story in Australia. According to the Australian Associated Press:

"Mr Dauth briefed Mr Flugge in New York in February 2002 - 13 months before the invasion - and the details appear in minutes of AWB's February 27 board meeting tendered to the inquiry.