See also:
Proof is in the memo:
Times Herald-Record June 13, 2005
Soldiers died for a lie: All the world - except America - is buzzing
about the fact that George Bush created the WMD threat to justify his
war in Iraq.
http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2005/06/13/bethcolj.htm
Mr. President, Explain The Downing Street Memo :
We, the citizens of the United States, join the 88 members of
Congress who demand that the President and his administration address
the disturbing revelations in the Downing Street Memo.
We come together, as concerned Americans, irrespective of political
affiliation, to seek the truth from our government. As citizens, we
deserve no less.
http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/dsm3/
Administration's Offenses Impeachable: So, what does it mean?
By Robert Shetterly
06/02/05 "Bangor Daily News"
It means that our president and all of his administration are war
criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people,
have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and
women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi
civilians
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9035.htm
-----
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050613/downing_street_ii.php
Downing Street II
Ray McGovern
June 13, 2005
Ray McGovern is a co-founder of the Truth Telling Coalition and of
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He had a 27-year
career as a CIA analyst, and now works for Tell the Word, the
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington,
DC.
Yesterday, London's Sunday Times published the text of another SECRET
UK EYES ONLY briefing document prepared for senior British officials.
This one was dated July 21, 2002, two days before British
intelligence chief Richard Dearlove gave Prime Minister Tony Blair
and his top national security advisers a briefing based on
discussions with American counterparts in Washington. The minutes
recording the discussion at the July 23, 2002, meeting, published by
the Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times on May 1, 2005, included Dearlove's
matter-of-fact report that President George W. Bush had decided to
bring about "regime change" in Iraq by military action; that the
attack would be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD"
(weapons of mass destruction); and that "the intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the policy."
Creating Conditions
At that meeting, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw noted that the evidence
regarding "weapons of mass destruction" was "thin." And British
Attorney General Peter Goldsmith pointed out that "the desire for
regime change was not a legal base for military action." But Blair
gave them the back of his hand, ordering them to "work on the
assumption that the U.K. would take part in any military action."
It is a safe bet that the British seemed a bunch of nervous Nellies
in the eyes of the hard-nosed "neoconservatives" running our policy
toward Iraq. The briefing paper of July 21 shows senior British
officials preoccupied with the question of how to fix it so the war
would be legal. The paper makes it clear that U.S. military plans
assumed, "as a minimum, the use of British bases on the islands of
Cyprus and Diego Garcia." Even this minimum gave rise to serious
legal questions. Pervading the briefing paper is the British leaders'
need to square a circle: how to render legal an illegal, unprovoked
attack on Iraq-or in the words of the briefing paper, how to go about
"creating the conditions...in which we could legally support military
action."
The briefing paper of July 21, 2002, offers this clear picture of
what the British see as the U.S. goal. "U.S. military planning
unambiguously takes as its objective the removal of Saddam Hussein's
regime, followed by elimination of Iraqi WMD." But, alas, with the
evidence of WMD "thin," and an invasion to bring about "regime
change" illegal, the British found themselves between Iraq and a hard
place-Washington. The document reeks not only of obsequiousness
toward the United States, but also wonderment at Washington's
policies-particularly with respect to international law.
U.S. views of international law vary from that of the U.K. and the
international community. Regime change per se is not a proper basis
for military action under international law...Legal bases for an
invasion of Iraq are in principle conceivable...but would be
difficult to establish because of, for example, the tests of
immediacy and proportionality.
In lay terms, that must mean that, absent any immediate threat, those
who chose to invade and occupy Iraq anyway would flunk the "test of
proportionality." Grasping at straws, the document raises the
possibility of demanding Iraqi acceptance of an unacceptably
intrusive U.N. inspection regime:
It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which
Saddam would reject (because he is unwilling to accept unfettered
access)....However, failing that (or an Iraqi attack) we would be
most unlikely to achieve a legal base for military action by January
2003.
The British, you see, knew that the summer months in Iraq are
uncomfortably hot. Thus, January was the time they thought an
invasion would have to begin, or the attack would have to be put off
until autumn. As for a possible attack by Iraq, British government
documents released to Parliament show that American and British
aircraft dropped no bombs on Iraq in March 2002, 10 tons of bombs in
July, and 54.6 tons in September. Nevertheless, this failed to
provoke Saddam Hussein into the kind of reaction that could be used
as an ostensible casus belli. And intrusive inspections? Iraq wound
up tolerating the strictest inspection regime in modern history. And
when U.N. inspectors found Al Samoud missiles with a range greater
than that permitted, Saddam allowed them to be destroyed.
One can visualize the British lawyers wringing their hands: Foiled again.
Breaking The Laws Of War
While the White House may have deemed British government lawyers
lily-livered or perhaps "quaint," they were under a good deal of
pressure from the British military establishment, which wields more
influence in the British government than its domesticated Pentagon
counterparts do in Washington. To his credit, British Admiral Michael
Boyce, chief of the defense staff, demanded a straightforward,
written opinion from the attorney general that attacking Iraq would
be lawful, before Boyce would put his troops at risk of subsequent
prosecution as war criminals.
This put the bite on Attorney General Goldsmith who had long shared
the doubts of the legal establishment about the legality of starting
a war without unequivocal endorsement by the United Nations. After
much equivocation, Goldsmith bowed to Blair and was asked to appear
before the cabinet on March 17, 2003, two days before the war began.
Goldsmith read a brief statement saying he now thought attacking Iraq
was lawful, and Blair quickly moved the discussion on. Questions were
not permitted. The British attorney general reportedly confided to
lawyer friends during February and early March 2003 that he found
himself in an "impossible" position, and wondered aloud if he should
stay in the job.
Admiral Boyce, upset that he was never shown Goldsmith's more
equivocal advice to Blair prior to March 17, has now said that if
British troops are brought to trial by the International Criminal
Court (ICC), British ministers should be "brought into the frame as
well." The London Observer asked Boyce if Blair and Goldsmith should
be included. "Too bloody right," was his answer.
American forces, of course, do not have to worry about the ICC, since
the Bush administration "unsigned" the signature that President Bill
Clinton had affixed to the treaty in December 2000. Nor have U.S.
government officials shown themselves to be sticklers about
international law. In November 2003, Richard Perle, then a key leader
of the Defense Policy Board and a principal intellectual author of
the invasion of Iraq, left international lawyers astonished when he
told a London audience, "I think in this case international law stood
in the way of doing the right thing."
The Evidence Strengthens
When asked about the July 23, 2002, minutes at their press conference
last week in Washington, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair did
a good job of obfuscating-enough to mislead our corporate press into
the all-too-familiar he-said, she-said reporting. What went unnoticed
was the fact that in the process, the two leaders unintentionally
acknowledged the authenticity of the minutes, which read like a
meeting of Mafioso. They may think no one will read the actual
minutes. In that, they are dead wrong. And these new British
revelations have already strengthened the case against the Bush
administration.
The first paragraph of the Downing Street minutes of July 23, 2002,
warns that they "should be shown only to those with a genuine need to
know its contents." In a democracy, we the people have a genuine need
to know the background of decisions on war and peace-so the source(s)
who leaked the minutes and other documents were performing a duty
that can be seen as truly patriotic. And patriotic leaks can be done
without revealing information that truly needs to be protected.
On behalf of the Truth Telling Coalition, let me invite any patriotic
truth tellers out of the woodwork, so that truly courageous leaders
like Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., will not have to depend solely on
patriots in Britain (and Rupert Murdoch!). Conyers has a tip line on
his website, and our coalition appeal includes a number of pointers
about patriotic leaking, and what kinds of support are available.
Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.
-John Adams, August 1765
_______________________________________________
Biofuel mailing list
Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages):
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/