AHEAD OF THE CURVE

Does Greg Palast have influence, or was he simply ahead of the curve as usual? Another possibility: Someone took note of this May 6 item, in which my staff of thousands pointed out that Palast was "pissed off that the American press, unlike the British press, has made so little" of the Downing Street memo leaked to The Times of London and "splashed across [its] front pages" on May 1.

The memo revealed, as Palast wrote, "an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony."

Anyway, have a look at Editor & Publisher's May 14 article, which says: "For more than 10 days, the U.S. media nearly ignored it, but finally the so-called 'Downing Street Memo' is finally gaining traction in the U.S. press. The Los Angeles Times featured a lengthy report on Thursday, and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post followed on Friday."

Yesterday WashPost ombudsman Michael Geller wrote, "I have to say I'm amazed that The Post took almost two weeks to follow up on the Times report." This morning Paul Krugman takes note. He writes:

There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the 'Downing Street memo' -- actually the minutes of a British prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it wanted.

It's not his strongest columm -- not nearly as strong as the one he wrote on April 29, "A Private Obsession," about health care reform being blocked by conservative ideologues who believe in privatization when it is the private system as we know it that is to blame for lousy health care in the first place. But it will have to do for today's fix of Krugman.