Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’

[gldstwmn]

NOTE: This article is long so I am posting just a few paragraphs and those of you who are interested can click the link and read the full article. :)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1650822,00.html

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality “would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation”.

The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times.

The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.

“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.

The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March 2003.

The briefing paper is certain to add to the pressure, particularly on the American president, because of the damaging revelation that Bush and Blair agreed on regime change in April 2002 and then looked for a way to justify it.

There has been a growing storm of protest in America, created by last month’s publication of the minutes in The Sunday Times. A host of citizens, including many internet bloggers, have demanded to know why the Downing Street memo (often shortened to “the DSM” on websites) has been largely ignored by the US mainstream media.

The White House has declined to respond to a letter from 89 Democratic congressmen asking if it was true — as Dearlove told the July meeting — that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” in Washington.

The Downing Street memo burst into the mainstream American media only last week after it was raised at a joint Bush-Blair press conference, forcing the prime minister to insist that “the facts were not fixed in any shape or form at all”.

John Conyers, the Democratic congressman who drafted the letter to Bush, has now written to Dearlove asking him to say whether or not it was accurate that he believed the intelligence was being “fixed” around the policy. He also asked the former MI6 chief precisely when Bush and Blair had agreed to invade Iraq and whether it is true they agreed to “manufacture” the UN ultimatum in order to justify the war.

He and other Democratic congressmen plan to hold their own inquiry this Thursday with witnesses including Joe Wilson, the American former ambassador who went to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore for its nuclear weapons programme.

[dudden22]

:distress: Thanks for posting. The sad part is that I am not suprised at all. I am equally not suprised by the lack of media coverage here in the U.S. I guess Mangelina and Brad along with the Michael Jackson trial are more important.

[golddustdragon]

I want to know from any British Ledgies what the feeling across the pond is like as these new scandals keep appearing in the British press. Do you think Blair might resign?

[gldstwmn]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/11/AR2005061100723.html

Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan
Advisers to Blair Predicted Instability

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 12, 2005; Page A01

A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.

The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.

In its introduction, the memo "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" notes that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but adds that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it."

The July 21 memo was produced by Blair's staff in preparation for a meeting with his national security team two days later that has become controversial on both sides of the Atlantic since last month's disclosure of official notes summarizing the session.

In those meeting minutes -- which have come to be known as the Downing Street Memo -- British officials who had just returned from Washington said Bush and his aides believed war was inevitable and were determined to use intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and his relations with terrorists to justify invasion of Iraq.

The "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," said the memo -- an assertion attributed to the then-chief of British intelligence, and denied by U.S. officials and by Blair at a news conference with Bush last week in Washington. Democrats in Congress led by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), however, have scheduled an unofficial hearing on the matter for Thursday.

Now, disclosure of the memo written in advance of that meeting -- and other British documents recently made public -- show that Blair's aides were not just concerned about Washington's justifications for invasion but also believed the Bush team lacked understanding of what could happen in the aftermath.

In a section titled "Benefits/Risks," the July 21 memo states, "Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."

Saying that "we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective," the memo's authors point out, "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." The authors add, "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

That memo and other internal British government documents were originally obtained by Michael Smith, who writes for the London Sunday Times. Excerpts were made available to The Washington Post, and the material was confirmed as authentic by British sources who sought anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter.

The Bush administration's failure to plan adequately for the postwar period has been well documented. The Pentagon, for example, ignored extensive State Department studies of how to achieve stability after an invasion, administer a postwar government and rebuild the country. And administration officials have acknowledged the mistake of dismantling the Iraqi army and canceling pensions to its veteran officers -- which many say hindered security, enhanced anti-U.S. feeling and aided what would later become a violent insurgency.

Testimony by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of Iraq policy, before a House subcommittee on Feb. 28, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, illustrated the optimistic view the administration had of postwar Iraq. He said containment of Hussein the previous 12 years had cost "slightly over $30 billion," adding, "I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years." As of May, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Congress has approved $208 billion for the war in Iraq since 2003.

The British, however, had begun focusing on doubts about a postwar Iraq in early 2002, according to internal memos.

A March 14 memo to Blair from David Manning, then the prime minister's foreign policy adviser and now British ambassador in Washington, reported on talks with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Among the "big questions" coming out of his sessions, Manning reported, was that the president "has yet to find the answers . . . [and] what happens on the morning after."

About 10 days later, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote a memo to prepare Blair for a meeting in Crawford, Tex., on April 8. Straw said "the big question" about military action against Hussein was, "how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better," as "Iraq has no history of democracy."

Straw said the U.S. assessments "assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq's WMD [weapons of mass destruction] threat. But none has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured. . . ."

Later in the summer, the postwar doubts would be raised again, at the July 23 meeting memorialized in the Downing Street Memo. Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, the British intelligence service, reported on his meetings with senior Bush officials. At one point, Dearlove said, "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman, appearing June 5 on "Meet the Press," disagreed with Dearlove's remark. "I think that there was clearly planning that occurred."

The Blair government, unlike its U.S. counterparts, always doubted that coalition troops would be uniformly welcomed, and sought U.N. participation in the invasion in part to set the stage for an international occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, said British officials interviewed recently. London was aware that the State Department had studied how to deal with an invasion's aftermath. But the British government was "shocked," in the words of one official, "when we discovered that in the postwar period the Defense Department would still be running the show."

The Downing Street Memo has been the subject of debate since the London Sunday Times first published it May 1. Opponents of the war say it proved the Bush administration was determined to invade months before the president said he made that decision.

Neither Bush nor Blair has publicly challenged the authenticity of the July 23 memo, nor has Dearlove spoken publicly about it. One British diplomat said there are different interpretations.

Last week, it was the subject of questions posed to Blair and Bush during the former's visit to Washington.

Asked about Dearlove being quoted as saying that in the United States, intelligence was being "fixed around the policy" of removing Hussein by military action, Blair said, "No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all." He then went on to discuss the British plan, outlined in the memo, to go to the United Nations to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq.

Bush said he had read "characterizations of the memo," pointing out that it was released in the middle of Blair's reelection campaign, and that the United States and Britain went to the United Nations to exhaust diplomatic options before the invasion.

[macfanken]

Here's a cool editorial from the Hartford Advocate... it's kind of related to the topic of this thread so I thought I'd post it here rather than start a new thread.

Deep Gloat
Bush faces his own Nixon moment

by Alan Bisbort - June 9, 2005

To George W. Bush's increasing dismay, there are only so many Michael Jacksons and runaway brides to go around. As Our Fearless Leader pedals his Pee Wee Herman bike more maniacally than usual these days, he's in desperate need of another monumentally weird news story to distract the nation "bigtime," as Dick Cheney would say. His approval ratings are in the low 40s (in the 30s on Social Security); Iraq refuses to behave the way he fantasized it; Congress has defied him on stem cells and lunatic-fringe judges; John Bolton and his moustache are on ice; prisoners have been tortured on his watch; dead bodies are piled in mounds everywhere he looks.
Poor boy. It's a wonder he doesn't just hide out on his ranch with his pillow over his head blissfully ignoring reality the way he ignored classes at Yale, his military commitment, his failed businesses, even his baseball team. If things get any worse, he may have to rename his ranch NeverNeverLand and invite young boys in for sleepovers.

Barely having dipped his toe into the pond of his second term, GWB is already a lame duck. He'll be even lamer when the Democrats retake the Congress in 2006, at which point there's a remote possibility that, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Which is why he doesn't need any monumentally weird news stories about Watergate hogging headlines in his lapdog press.

George W. Bush is facing his Nixon Moment. Indeed, the revelation of the identity of Deep Throat this past week was a national wake-up call. It was a reminder of just how far "investigative journalism" has fallen in this nation, where the best of that formerly celebrated breed are working at cartoon magazines (Sy Hersh at the New Yorker), as an exile in England (Greg Palast), as a satirist (Jon Stewart and The Daily Show) or wielding a camera (Michael Moore).

If a Deep Throat with close White House ties were today to funnel the truth to the press corps, half of the reporters would soil their britches in fright and the other half would run and rat him out to Massuh Rove. We got a glimpse of that dynamic when longtime White House insider -- a Republican, no less -- Richard Clarke spilled the beans on Bush's bungling the war on terror. Rather than address the issues of national importance Clarke raised in his book, the media focused on Clarke's "motives."

The dynamic was the same before the war began. Only a fool or blindly partisan hack thought attacking Iraq was justified. As Daily Kos notes, "The only thing surprising about the Iraq occupation is that it has so persistently mirrored what war critics predicted; a rapid military 'win,' followed by a Vietnam-like insurgency that bogs down U.S. forces and destabilizes any nascent attempts at self-government. That's not horn-tooting; anyone not fully under the spell of yay! war could see it coming ten miles off."

Yet, the media turned it into a he said/she said proposition. They presented, as "he said," the White House's insistence that Saddam had WMDs and posed an immediate threat to U.S. security, as well as the unchallenged innuendo that he had a connection to the terrorists that carried out the 9/11 attacks. On the "she said" side, you had Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, the United Nations, all of our traditional sissie allies and most of the rest of the world begging, cajoling, screaming NO.

Though one side was clearly lying -- the very definition of high crimes and misdemeanors -- their version was always given (more than) equal weight. In fact, the New York Times colluded with the lying side, via Judith Miller's criminally misleading reportage of Saddam's WMD cache, and Bob Novak was an outright accomplice to treason by revealing the name, at the White House's bidding, of an undercover CIA agent, compromising national security. Worst of all, Bob Woodward, one of the titans of Watergate, became George W. Bush's biggest wartime cheerleader.

So much for our press.

George W. Bush needs another runaway bride, not this collective gloating over Deep Throat. That's because Watergate equals impeachment. We don't want to be thinking impeachment right now. Why? Because no president in American history is more impeachable than George W. Bush. There has not been such high crimes and misdemeanors, such chicanery, manipulation, murder and looting since, well, ever. Nixon's crime was the cover up, not the initial act. Bush's crimes are so numerous that any cover up, including ones willingly aided by a national press obsessed with Michael Jackson's sexual psychosis and hillbilly brides, will ultimately fail.

It has been said that the six-year witch hunt of Bill Clinton was payback for Watergate. But, if indeed there is a predictable trajectory to our national Greek tragedy, the payback for Clinton will be an even bigger bitch.

Let the impeachment begin.

[SuzeQuze]

I heard the "fixed around the policy" phrase was defended by a British official who said that doesn't mean what it would mean in America, that it is a sort of slang phrase meaning attached to, or some other weak phrase. British Ledgies, what is your take on that phrase? Does it mean that they were going forward with the policy to inevitably go to war with Iraq by picking and choosing intelligence that matched their ideology? That's what it meant to me when I heard it. :eek:

I'm actually surprised that there is written evidence of this. Someone just typed that up without thinking it might do damage later? Well, hopefully their goof is the gain of those seeking justice.

[gldstwmn]

Here's a cool editorial from the Hartford Advocate... it's kind of related to the topic of this thread so I thought I'd post it here rather than start a new thread.

Deep Gloat
Bush faces his own Nixon moment

Let the impeachment begin.

That's a great editorial. Thanks!

[gldstwmn]

I'm actually surprised that there is written evidence of this. Someone just typed that up without thinking it might do damage later? Well, hopefully their goof is the gain of those seeking justice.

These documents were never to see the light of day. Someone very, very high up in the British cabinet is leaking these.
It's just like Cheney's secret energy meetings. If the minutes of those were leaked, we would most likely see that they were studying maps of the Iraqi oil fields.
I hope this whole thing blows wide open. If it doesn't, the implications will be global. Because not only are we talking about our own Constitution being violated, we are talking about international law being violated.
There was a reason Bush refused to sign the War Crimes Treaty and it wasn't Bosnia, IMO.
Not to mention, we had no right to remove Saddam from power in Iraq. And I am not defending Saddam.
As Stevie would say, this is serious.

[Gailh]

I want to know from any British Ledgies what the feeling across the pond is like as these new scandals keep appearing in the British press. Do you think Blair might resign?

What? Mr Teflon - don't be daft!

IMO George Bush always wanted to invade Iraq and was going to do it come what may. It would be nice if, just for once, Tony Blair grew a spine and when Dubya says "jump" he doesn't say how high?

This is the second time (that I can remember) that a highly intelligent British Prime Minister has become the poodle of a (how shall I put this politely?) US President who's not the sharpest tool in the box.

But resign? Not over this issue.

Gail

PS I am British by the way

[gldstwmn]

What? Mr Teflon - don't be daft!

IMO George Bush always wanted to invade Iraq and was going to do it come what may. It would be nice if, just for once, Tony Blair grew a spine and when Dubya says "jump" he doesn't say how high?

This is the second time (that I can remember) that a highly intelligent British Prime Minister has become the poodle of a (how shall I put this politely?) US President who's not the sharpist tool in the box.

But resign? Not over this issue.

Gail

PS I am British by the way

I liked Mr. Blair before he got mixed up with George "Momo" Bush.

[golddustdragon]

Remember that Daily Show segment after the November 5th election? Where Jon Stewart's comparing a "town hall meeting" in the UK where the audience spoke their minds in front of Mr. Blair, and a "town hall meeting" in the "freest country in the world" where the audience is hand-picked and told not to ask hardballs at the president?

Dammit, if only our media wasn't so privy with what this Administration is doing. Then the Downing Street Memo would finally open so many eyes.

[strandinthewind]

Remember that Daily Show segment after the November 5th election? Where Jon Stewart's comparing a "town hall meeting" in the UK where the audience spoke their minds in front of Mr. Blair, and a "town hall meeting" in the "freest country in the world" where the audience is hand-picked and told not to ask hardballs at the president?

Dammit, if only our media wasn't so privy with what this Administration is doing. Then the Downing Street Memo would finally open so many eyes.

I just did not think the Downing Street Memo. was so damning. I knew all of the stuff in there :shrug: I mean it contained no really new information and the stuff it did say everyone has known about and most could care a less about :shrug:

On edit - I am not saying that the whole thing is not horrible - I am just saying the majority apparently does not care enough not to reelect the players in this.

[golddustdragon]

... but here it is again if it was.

Flattering the popinjays (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1505821,00.html)


Flattering the popinjays

Journalists are letting our leaders get away with murder

AL Kennedy
Tuesday June 14, 2005
The Guardian

Nostalgia's a grand thing. Hearing my former MP, Gorgeous George, berating those bewildered senators took me back. We both hail from Dundee and it was great to hear the old dialect again. Hardly a school day went by without me calling someone a "Trotskyite popinjay", and the cries of "You throw like a big lickspittle" were frequent.
Another Scottish firebrand, James Maxton, once lost his parliamentary privileges for calling Winston Churchill "a murderer". Which would constitute another rare sign of life from a world where arms deals, pre-emptive invasions, environmental rape and moral collapse are coddled in an atmosphere of courteous restraint. Churchill, for example, said Maxton was "the greatest gentleman in the House of Commons" - because Maxton was dead by then and nothing aids the status quo more than politesse.


But back in the 70s it seemed that things were set to change. Woodward and Bernstein, Bill Moyers, Seymour Hersh, Sidney Schanberg - all were emerging as top-notch investigative reporters. Plus the thought of those sexy informants: mysterious Deep Throat and dashing Daniel Ellsberg. It seemed that steadfast reporting and public protest could change the world, unseat corrupt leaders, even end an unjust war. The popinjays were getting no respect.
Today, of course, we have Vietnam II, the BBC is in tatters, Deep Throat turns out to be a mad-eyed geezer with a book deal and Ellsberg is still appealing for whistleblowers when no one will print their revelations unless they involve pierced labia, or Castro having sex with a dog. While all other public figures cannot appear in any format without being at least partially naked, sexually reassigned and/or masturbating a farm animal, our politicians are cocooned by embedded sycophancy. Not that I'd want to see Blair stripped with his parts in a jar and laying hands on a helpless donkey, but equally I am very tired of bombshells such as the Downing Street memo bringing us no nearer a transatlantic war crimes tribunal.

Around the globe popinjays both roundly condemn and unflinchingly support terrorism, torture, ethnic cleansing, the deployment of WMDs, the possession of WMDs and the imposition of chaos upon areas to be announced. This mental effort would be immensely tiring without the kind support of the mainstream media. Mugging Galloway on Newsnight or hounding Clinton were much safer options than rocking the boat over the massive fraud in the last two presidential elections, or the much-discussed possibilities of fraud in our last election, which seemed to evaporate as soon as the polls closed.

Not that I blame journalists for being cautious - 28 were killed this year already, 53 in 2004. During our occupation of Iraq, where journalists may or may not be specifically targeted by US troops, 63 journalists have been killed so far.

Then again, we are supposed to be living in a democracy where we can speak our minds. So why do we largely inhabit a popinjay-friendly limbo of weasel words and porn? Serbian television risks airing footage of Serbian war crimes; we get investigations revealing that the BNP don't like foreigners. Dahr Jamail, Greg Palast, Aaron Glantz and others are doing their bit, but why is it so hard to find out what's really happening in Falluja, in al-Qa'im, in Guantánamo? Shouldn't we have access to all the facts about depleted uranium deaths, 9/11, Iraq deaths and casualties, ID cards, the corporate-driven EU constitution, expansion of the Patriot Act? Shouldn't the truth be more important than flattering the popinjays, the murderers?