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Getting closer
to the tipping point. I’ve added
more links to the Downing Street Memo story, below, including 2 more from the
Financial Times of London dated 061205, one about a briefing paper informing
the UK ministers that the invasion plans “needed an excuse”. KwC Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Iraq Plan By Walter Pincus,
Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, June 12, 2005; 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 and how there can be any certainty that the
replacement regime will be any better." 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. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/11/AR2005061100723.html For Your Files: Knight Ridder’s Feb 13
2002 reporting that Bush had decided to go to war http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/11809605.htm “We’re taking him out” May 2002 TIME article describes
Bush’s early plans to invade Iraq, before
the June 2002 Dearborn minutes became the Downing Street memo. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,235395,00.html Knight Ridder’s Oct
2004 coverage on post-war planning: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9927782.htm 050105 M Smith
Financial Times The Secret Downing Street
Memo http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html 061205 M. Smith The Leak that changed minds on the Iraq war
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1650565,00.html 061205 M. Smith Ministers were told of need of Gulf War ‘excuse’: 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. 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. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1650822,00.html Resignation letter from office of UK Attorney Gen. Goldsmith indicates
changed position on legality of Iraq war http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=623125 E&P ED Papers reach
Iraq war boiling point: “While still
refusing to use the "W" word in offering advice to Dubya -- that is,
"withdrawal" -- some at least are finally using the "L"
word, for lies.” http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000946738 June 9, 2005 Houston Chronicle ED: Memorandum of Intent: “The Bush administration should explain why Americans should not be disturbed by
a secret British memo on the runup to the Iraq War… Intelligence agents' observations can be inaccurate. The
head of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, erroneously thought the case for
Iraqi WMD was a slam dunk. But the Downing Street memo accurately foresees the
U.S. invasion of Iraq and the administration's attempts to link Saddam to
al-Qaida and weapons of mass destruction — links that were found after the
invasion not to exist. The memo's observation that U.S. intelligence would be
shaped to policy might be mistaken, but the administration did wind up using
flawed analysis to justify its war policy to the American people. [During the Blair press conference] Bush responded directly to the Downing
Street Memo's content for the first time, saying, "there's nothing
further than the truth." He added that his administration had
worked hard to avoid sending troops to war. "Nobody," Bush said, "wants to commit military into combat.
It's the last option." http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/3219162 |
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