The Leaked Memo – Impeachable Offense?
Here are a series of articles that strongly suggest that Bush should be impeached. Total U.S. casualties in the war have now passed 1,600. Has a crime not been committed here, a classic example of what criminologists call “state crime”? For a fascinating related story read Karen Kwiatkowski's account called "The New Pentagon Papers" at this site: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/
Here's the latest commentary, even more revealing:
Here's one by Ralph Nader calling for impeachment:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7982
For a good commentary on this issue see “Secret Way to War” by Mark Danner, The New York Review of Books and TomDispatch
http://www.alternet.org/story/22009/
Plans for invading Iraq were in the works long before 9/11. See Project for a New American Century, starting with their “statement of principles”
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
Also see their publication “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
However, see the following article written back in March, 2004:
"War and the law: the inside story" by John Kampfner, appearing in The New Statesman
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4678_133/ai_n6154858#continue
Proof Bush Fixed the Facts
By Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com
May 6, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21945/
"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white -- and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.
It has been a hard learning -- that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.
Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents -- this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.
Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.
Juggernaut Before The Horse
In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:
All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli" -- the clear implication being that planners of the air campaign would also see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.
The discussion at 10 Downing Street on July 23, 2002 calls to mind the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC) on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was there. O'Neill was taken aback that there was no discussion of why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam. Rather, after CIA Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building in Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical or biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to which Iraqi targets might be best to bomb. Again, neither O'Neill nor the other participants asked the obvious questions. Another NSC meeting two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.
Obedience School
As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's "poodle." The tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that Blair will wag his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands. At one point he ventures the thought that, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change." This, after Attorney General Peter Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for regime change "was not a legal base for military action," -- a point Goldsmith made again just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was persuaded by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to change his mind 10 days later.
The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."
I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting so jarring. Surely it is what one might expect, given all else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white somehow gives it more impact. And the implications are no less jarring.
One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet. (And there is no closer relationship between two intelligence services than the privileged one between the CIA and MI-6.) Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be welcome. If there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is that kind of politicization. But Tenet decided to be a "team player" and set the tone.
Politicization: Big Time
Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened. The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with the president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit. The British documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward" in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception -- an order of magnitude more serious. No other conclusion is now possible.
Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."
Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball" raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before the United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his CIA supervisor:
"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about."
When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees explaining the "rules of the road" -- first and foremost, "We support the administration and its policies." So much for objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.
Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized environment of Congress, brought with them a radically new ethos -- one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers than to that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage to speak truth to power.
Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up" (as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior decision for war. There is no word to describe the reaction of honest intelligence professionals to the corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence. "Outrage" does not come close.
Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures
Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well -- the more so, inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.
In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch another unprovoked war -- against, say, Iran.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21945/
More stories:
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Afraid to tell the truth
May 6th, 2005 6:55 pm
A secret memo publicized in Britain confirms the lies on which Bush based his Iraq policy. Why has it received so little notice in the U.S. press?
By Joe Conason / Salon
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=2547
May 6, 2005 | Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?
There is a "smoking memo" that confirms the worst assumptions about the Bush administration's Iraq policy, but although that memo generated huge pre-election headlines in Britain, its existence has hardly been mentioned here.
On May 1, the Sunday Times of London published the confidential minutes of a meeting held almost three years ago at 10 Downing Stree, residence of the British prime minister, where Tony Blair and members of his Cabinet discussed the British government's ongoing consultations with the Bush administration over Iraq. Those in attendance included the defense secretary, the foreign secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence chief and Blair's closest personal aides.
The minutes of that meeting, set down in a memorandum by foreign policy advisor Matthew Rycroft, were circulated to all who were present. Dated July 23, 2002, the Rycroft memo begins with the following admonishment: "This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents." Evidently that doesn't include those of us living in the United States, although press coverage of the document in Britain created a sensational 11th-hour backlash against Blair. (The prime minister admitted that the Iraq war had been a "deeply divisive" issue as he savored a narrow election victory Friday.)
What the minutes clearly show is that Bush and Blair secretly agreed to wage war for "regime change" nearly a year before the invasion -- and months before they asked the United Nations Security Council to support renewed weapons inspections as an alternative to armed conflict. The minutes also reveal the lingering doubts over the legal and moral justifications for war within the Blair government.
But for Americans, the most important lines in the July 23 minutes are those attributed to Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, who in spy jargon is to be referred to only as "C." The minutes indicate that Sir Richard had discovered certain harsh realities during a visit to the United States that summer:
"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the U.N. route ... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
At the same meeting, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirmed Sir Richard's assessment:
"The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."
Those few lines sum up everything that went wrong in the months and years to come -- and place the clear stamp of falsehood on the Bush administration's public pronouncements as the president pushed the nation toward war.
When Bush signed the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq on Oct. 16, 2002 -- three months after the Downing Street memorandum -- he didn't say that military action was "inevitable." Instead, the president assured Americans and the world that he still hoped war could be avoided.
"I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary," he said at a press conference. "Hopefully this can be done peacefully. Hopefully we can do this without any military action." He promised that he had "carefully weighed the human cost of every option before us" and that if the United States went into battle, it would be "as a last resort."
In the months that followed, as we now know, the president and his aides grossly exaggerated, and in some instances falsified, the intelligence concerning the Iraqi regime's supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Defenders of his policy have since insisted that he too was misled with bad information, provided by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies.
But "C" heard something very different from Blair's allies in Washington.
According to him, Bush, determined to oust Saddam, planned to "justify" a preventive war by tying the terrorist threat to Iraq's WMD arsenal -- and manipulating the intelligence to fit his policy instead of determining the policy based on the facts.
That is precisely what happened, and precisely the opposite of what the president vowed to do. Not only did Bush and his top aides lie about their approach to the alleged threat posed by Iraq, but they continued to lie about that process in the war's aftermath.
And what of the aftermath of the war in Iraq? Evidently "little discussion" was devoted to that topic as the Bush administration prepared to sell the war, or so "C" reported to his colleagues in London. Iraqis and Americans, as well as their coalition partners, have been suffering the dismal results of that lack of planning ever since.
Despite much happy talk from Washington about the successes achieved in Iraq, recent polls show that Americans are more disenchanted than ever with the war. Nearly 60 percent now say the president made the wrong decision and that the outcome is not worth the price in lives and treasure. What would they say if the media dared to tell them the truth about how it all happened?
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/iraq_when_was_the_die_cast.php
John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. He is author of Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (The New Press).
Coming just days after the release of the original secret legal advice given to the British government on the lack of foundation in international law for invading Iraq, a fresh leak out of London now reveals with stunning clarity that the goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein was set at least a year in advance.
Emerging in the final days before the UK's parliamentary election, a memo leaked to the London Sunday Times reveals that Bush decided to go to war by April of 2002, and that by July of that same year it was clear that the United States would fabricate the intelligence necessary to justify the war.
The Bush administration's pious rhetoric about strengthening the United Nations was strictly for public consumption. Its talk about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction—as Lord Goldsmith's legal opinion demonstrates—was crucial because the only avenue offering a fig leaf of legal justification for war was to claim to be enforcing U.N. disarmament resolutions. And President Bush's repeated assertions that no decision had been made about attacking Iraq were plainly false.
Decision Made: November 2001-April 2002
Military planning for Iraq actually began in November 2001, while the campaign in Afghanistan absorbed the public's attention. In his memoirs, American field commander General Tommy Franks tells us that on December 4, in his very first briefing of the existing U.S. contingency plan for Iraq, Franks told defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld that, "I am assuming the principle objective will be to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein." Rumsfeld replied that the president would make the ultimate decision but that, "That is my assumption too." After several weeks of fleshing out the preliminary concept, General Franks presented it to George W. Bush at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, on December 28. At that meeting Franks told the group that regime change and WMD removal were the working assumptions behind his concept, with "a murmur of assent" being the reaction of those at the table or watching the teleconference. At the end of the presentation, Bush expressed confidence that diplomacy and international pressure would make military action unnecessary.
Neither in his various statements to the media nor in interviews—including those with Bob Woodward—has Bush ever recounted his evolving thinking or detailed his actions. However, reports show that at the same time of Frank's planning—around the end of 2001—the president signed a directive authorizing the CIA to act against Saddam. Bush subsequently targeted Iraq as a member of his invented "Axis of Evil" in the State of the Union address in late January 2002. When asked on February 6, 2002, about the administration's desire for regime change in Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell replied, "We are looking at a variety of options that would bring that about." This was the day before General Franks presented a more detailed war plan to Bush and the National Security Council at the White House. Bush specifically told the press on February 12, regarding his options on Iraq, "I'll keep them close to my vest."
The following month Vice President Richard Cheney made an extensive tour of European and Middle Eastern nations which failed to enlist much support for action against Iraq. This made the attitude of the British a vital question for Bush. Prime Minister Tony Blair visited the United States early in April and met with Bush at Crawford. The latest leak from London—in this case a briefing paper prepared for a British cabinet meeting during the summer—show that it was at that meeting that Blair told Bush he would support the objective of regime change in Iraq. Bush emerged so triumphant from his encounter with the British that he blurted out—in a comment the administration later tried to downplay—"I explained to the prime minister that the policy of my government is the removal of Saddam."
Thus, evidence now shows that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein—included in the earliest planning assumptions for war with Iraq—had become a firm goal by February 2002, and would be set in concrete at Crawford in April, almost exactly a year before U.S. troops reached Baghdad.
War In The First Resort
President Bush considered only military options for the removal of Saddam. This process had begun to move quickly by then, with General Franks bringing both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his force commanders into the picture in March. Bush held the next key meeting at Camp David in May, with Tony Blair's assurances in his pocket. At that conference, General Franks notes, "I...described a series of military options to remove Saddam Hussein from power."
Secretary Powell brought up the significant diplomatic obstacles at Camp David, telling the group it would be difficult to line up international support for an invasion of Iraq. Franks clearly recalls that exchange. Domestic political support was obviously a corollary problem. This development explains the timing of the original demand for the CIA to assemble a document retailing claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that could be released to the public to encourage fears of Saddam. The Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of the Iraq intelligence reveals that the white paper was originally requested in May 2002. Not coincidentally, it now appears, the Blair government asked British intelligence to begin work on a similar document at the same time.
According to the leaked minutes of Blair's cabinet meeting on July 23, British intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove, just returned from talks in Washington, told the group that "military action was now seen as inevitable," and that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD." Dearlove also remarked that "the intelligence facts were being fixed around the policy." Both British foreign secretary Jack Straw and attorney general Lord Goldsmith warned of the thin case for war. Tony Blair did not disagree, he countered, telling the cabinet that "if the political context were right, people would support regime change." That appears to be Bush's exact calculation as well.
Cooking The Books
Thus the cooking of the books to justify the Iraq war was known at the time, not just in Washington but in London as well. Claims that the intelligence reporting on Iraq-both CIA and British-were simple errors of interpretation should be considered settled. And as for Bush's purposefulness in attacking Iraq, a Joint Chiefs of Staff "lessons learned" study from the war shows that the president signed a national security directive to finalize plans and deploy for the invasion at the end of June. All this happened before any of the diplomatic activity that the Bush administration represented as its main course of action.
In sum, to the threadbare legal justification for an aggressive war we must add premeditation of action. If this were a homicide, the district attorney would be considering indictment for conspiracy to murder. In international affairs, we're told, Iraq is just some broken china on the road to a miraculous blossoming of democracy in the Middle East. The arrogance, audacity, and cynicism in all this is exceeded only by its illegality. Small wonder that last week the military commander in chief who led British forces into the Iraq war, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, told a correspondent of the newspaper The Observer, "If my soldiers went to jail and I did some other people go as well with me."
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Impeachment Time: "Facts Were Fixed."
by Greg Palast; BuzzFlash; May 05, 2005
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=7799
Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.
The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."
For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."
And if this ain't it, nothing is.
The memo, uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe 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.
A conspiracy to commit serial fraud is, under federal law, racketeering. However, the Mob's schemes never cost so many lives.
Here's more. "Bush had made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."
Really? But Mr. Bush told us, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
A month ago, the Silberman-Robb Commission issued its report on WMD intelligence before the war, dismissing claims that Bush fixed the facts with this snooty, condescending conclusion written directly to the President, "After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons."
We now know the report was a bogus 618 pages of thick whitewash aimed to let Bush off the hook for his murderous mendacity.
Read on: The invasion build-up was then set, says the memo, "beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections." Mission accomplished.
You should parse the entire memo -- posted on my website -- and see if you can make it through its three pages without losing your lunch.
Now sharp readers may note they didn't see this memo, in fact, printed in the New York Times. It wasn't. Rather, it was splashed across the front pages of the Times of LONDON on Monday.
It has effectively finished the last, sorry remnants of Tony Blair's political career. (While his Labor Party will most assuredly win the elections Thursday, Prime Minister Blair is expected, possibly within months, to be shoved overboard in favor of his Chancellor of the Exchequer, a political execution which requires only a vote of the Labour party's members in Parliament.)
But in the US, barely a word. The New York Times covers this hard evidence of Bush's fabrication of a casus belli as some "British" elections story. Apparently, our President's fraud isn't "news fit to print."
My colleagues in the UK press have skewered Blair, digging out more incriminating memos, challenging the official government factoids and fibs. But in the US press nada, bubkes, zilch. Bush fixed the facts and somehow that's a story for "over there."
The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his cigar and Monica's affections. And the US media could print nothing else.
Now, we have the stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands, and neither a Republican Congress nor what is laughably called US journalism thought it worth a second look.
My friend Daniel Ellsberg once said that what's good about the American people is that you have to lie to them. What's bad about Americans is that it's so easy to do.
-----------
Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy. Read the memo in its entirety at
www.GregPalast.com
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British Intelligence Leak - Iraq Invasion Strategy
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Progressive Democrats of America Make National Call of Support for Congressional Letter Demanding Investigation of British Intelligence Leak on Iraq Invasion Strategy
(WASHINGTON, DC) — Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), ranking minority member of the
House Judiciary Committee, has released a letter signed by 88 fellow
Representatives. The letter demands an investigation into the revelation that
the American and British governments colluded secretly to manipulate
intelligence as a means of justifying a decision to invade Iraq that had already
been made. The Conyers letter and names of the House signatories can be read
here:
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/letters/bushsecretmemoltr5505.pdf
The revelations came on Monday, May 2nd by way of a report published in the London Telegraph, which described a leaked British intelligence memo from July of 2002. The memo, stamped “Secret,” described concerted efforts by both British and American officials to “fix intelligence and facts around the policy.” The policy in question was the invasion of Iraq. The memo noted specifically that the invasion would be illegal if a justification were not found or created.
The London Telegraph report can be read here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1592724,00.html
The British memo in question can be read here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html
Rep. Conyers’ letter specifically notes that the secret British memo includes revelations that:
· Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a meeting at which he
discussed military
options, having already committed himself to supporting President Bush’s plans
for invading Iraq.
· British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that the
case for war
was “thin” as “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability
was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran.”
· A separate secret briefing for the meeting said that
Britain and America
had to “create” conditions to justify a war.
· A British official “reported on his recent talks in
Washington. There was
a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable.
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the
conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being
fixed around the policy.”
The information revealed by this memo, which has not been denied by either the American or British governments, confirms accusations by a wide variety of ‘whistleblowers’ who have accused the Bush administration of manufacturing evidence for war against Iraq. Among these are:
· Richard Clarke, former White House Counter-Terrorism Czar,
who accused the
administration of using the September 11 attacks to justify an Iraq invasion,
thus creating the political cover described in the British memo.
· Tom Maertens, National Security Council director for
nuclear
non-proliferation for both the Clinton and Bush White House, backed up Clarke's
story with his own eyewitness testimony.
· Roger Cressey, Clarke's former deputy, who witnessed one of
the most
damning charges that has been leveled against the administration by Clarke:
They blew past al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks, focusing instead on Iraq.
· Donald Kerrick, a three-star General who served as deputy
National
Security Advisor under Clinton and stayed for several months in the Bush White
House, likewise saw this happening.
· Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary for George W. Bush,
was afforded a
position on the National Security Council because of his job as Treasury
Secretary, and sat in on the Iraq invasion planning sessions which were taking
place months before the attacks of September 11. Those planning sessions kicked
into high gear when the Towers came down.
· Greg Thielmann, former Director of the Office of Strategic,
Proliferation,
and Military Issues in the State Department, who was stunned to see the White
House use the 'uranium from Niger' war justifications that had been so
thoroughly debunked.
· Joseph Wilson, former ambassador and career diplomat, who
personally
debunked the uranium story after traveling to Niger to investigate the claims.
The most damning testimony regarding "fixing intelligence and facts around the policy" came from Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski in a 2004 interview with Salon magazine.
The Kwiakatowski interview with Salon can be read here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/
Kwiatkowski worked in the office of Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, and worked specifically with a secretive Pentagon organization run by Feith called the Office of Special Plans. Kwiatkowski reported: "From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq."
"I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy," continued Kwiatkowski, "favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies. I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president."
Progressive Democrats of America stands with Rep. Conyers and the 88 House members who are signatories to his letter and demands that a full and complete investigation be immediately undertaken into this matter.
Media Contact:
Kimberly Krautter
Toll Free (877) 368-9221
kimberly@pdamerica.org
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Here is the text of the leaked memo:
******
May 01,
2005
The
secret Downing Street memo
::nobreak::SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY
DAVID MANNING
From:
Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02
cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY
Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.
This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.
John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.
The two broad US options were:
(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).
(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.
The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:
(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.
(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.
(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.
The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.
The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.
The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.
The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.
On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.
For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.
The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.
John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.
The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.
Conclusions:
(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.
(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.
(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.
(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.
He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.
(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.
(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.
(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)
MATTHEW RYCROFT
(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)
**********
Blair: Britain
Discussed Early Plan to Topple Saddam
Sun May 1, 2005
08:03 AM ET Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=0PL2RPCEXJN2KCRBAELCFEY?type=worldNews&storyID=8353447&pageNumber=1
By Katherine Baldwin
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain discussed supporting the United States to bring about a change of government in Iraq eight months before the March 2003 invasion, Tony Blair said on Sunday.
But the prime minister, facing an election on Thursday in which the divisive war could cost him votes, denied suggestions his government took an early decision to topple Saddam Hussein.
His comments came in response to a leaked memo in a newspaper that said Blair and President Bush were determined to oust Iraq's former leader as early as July 2002.
"I actually talked about regime change if it wasn't possible to get him (Saddam) to comply with international law," Blair said in a phone-in on British commercial radio stations.
Blair confirmed he discussed removing Saddam in a July 2002 top-level government meeting after the Sunday Times printed what it said were secret minutes of that meeting.
"Of course all the time what you are thinking is what happens if we can't do this in a peaceful way," Blair told BBC Television, when asked about the contents of the leaked memo.
"The idea we'd decided definitively for military action at that stage is wrong and disproved by the fact that several months later we went back to the United Nations to get a final resolution.
"If the U.N. resolution had been adhered to by Saddam then that would have been an end to it," he added.
The leaked document gave fresh ammunition to Blair's political opponents who accuse him of lying to the public and parliament over Iraq and of striking a pact with Bush to launch an invasion well before seeking U.N. backing.
The prime minister built his case for war on the basis Iraq's banned weapons were a threat and has said "regime chance" was never his aim.
Blair's opponents seized on the memo to support their attacks on his integrity but opinion polls show Blair's Labour party is likely to win a third term on Thursday, although its huge parliamentary majority is expected to shrink.
CASE FOR WAR "THIN"
According to the minutes, Blair spoke to his cabinet explicitly in terms of toppling Saddam.
"If the political context were right, people would support regime change," Blair is recorded as saying. "The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work."
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the case for war was "thin" because "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD (weapons of mass destruction) capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran," the minutes said.
Straw proposed giving Saddam an ultimatum to allow in U.N. weapons inspectors, provoking a confrontation that would "help with the legal justification for the use of force."
Britain's spy chief, Sir Richard Dearlove, fresh from a trip to Washington, had concluded that war was "inevitable" because "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action," and "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Blair ordered his chief of defense staff, Sir Michael Boyce, to present him with war plans later that week, the minutes said.
From the web site Media Matters - http://mediamatters.org/items/200505060007#4
What is media coverage of Iraq war good for? Absolutely nothing
On May 1, the British Sunday Times revealed a secret memo, dated July 23, 2002, that was circulated among British defense and foreign policy officials and staff. The memo read in part:
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. [Emphasis added.]
Salon.com's Joe Conason wrote of the memo:
There is a "smoking memo" that confirms the worst assumptions about the Bush administration's Iraq policy, but although that memo generated huge pre-election headlines in Britain, its existence has hardly been mentioned here.
[The memo read in part,] "The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."
Those few lines sum up everything that went wrong in the months and years to come -- and place the clear stamp of falsehood on the Bush administration's public pronouncements as the president pushed the nation toward war.
Think Progress has more on the memo's implications.
As Conason noted, the memo has received scant attention in the U.S. media. A May 6 Knight Ridder article began:
A highly classified British memo, leaked during Britain's just-concluded election campaign, claims President Bush decided by summer 2002 to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.
But beyond that, American media outlets have been largely silent about the memo -- despite paying great attention to the British elections upon which the revelation of the memo had considerable impact.
CNN, for example, aired only the briefest of passing references to the memo:
· CAROL LIN (anchor): "Also, it's an election week in Great Britain. And Prime Minister Tony Blair is on the defensive, mainly over accusations in British press, reportedly from leaked secret documents that he and the U.S. president had planned the invasion of Iraq and committed troops nine months before it happened." [CNN Sunday Night, 5/1/05]
· ROBIN OAKLEY (CNN European political editor): "But Tony Blair and his party are not behaving as if they've got this election in the bag. And the reason is the wrong subject keeps cropping up in the headlines. It's Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, day after day, more revelations, leaked memorandums, leaked Downing Street about the government, for example, committing itself to war in Iraq many months before it has previously indicated that it did so. And Tony Blair is worried that in the marginal seats, a lot of traditional labor supporters who didn't like the war will fail to turn out in what may be a low turnout election." [News from CNN, 5/2/05]
That's it -- and that's more than we can find on MSNBC or Fox News.
Of course, as we noted last week, news organizations have a difficult task in deciding what is and isn't newsworthy.
In this case, for cable news outlets to have covered the disclosure of a memo that suggests that President Bush manipulated pre-war intelligence to support his agenda, they might have had to cut back on their wall-to-wall coverage of one of the most important issues of our time: the so-called "Runaway Bride," Jennifer Wilbanks. A search of the Nexis database yields 125 news reports about Wilbanks on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox since May 1 (including online news reports). Or perhaps they would have had to pare down their coverage of American Idol, or the Michael Jackson trial.
The cable "news" networks aren't alone in ignoring the story, though. The New York Times, which famously apologized for its pre-war coverage, apparently still hasn't learned its lesson -- the "paper of record" hasn't yet mentioned the British memo.
Maybe that will change now that 88 members of Congress have sent President Bush a letter demanding answers about the matter. If not, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), who circulated the letter, might want to see if Paula Abdul will sign it.
(P.S.: After this was written, but before it was posted, CNN again mentioned the memo: Inside Politics host Judy Woodruff introduced the May 6 "Inside the Blogs" segment by saying, "A secret British government memo has been made public, and it has the blogosphere all abuzz. We check in now on that and more with CNN political producer Abbi Tatton and Jacki Schechner, our blog reporter." Woodruff offered no explanation for why CNN and other media outlets haven't been similarly "abuzz" over the memo. Regardless, it's a dark day when CNN's "witheringly bad" and "excruciatingly empty" blog segment actually does a better job of covering the news than the rest of the network.)
A New Memo-gate? Knight Ridder
Covers Leaked British Document That Disputes Bush Claims on Iraq
By E&P Staff
Published: May 06, 2005 4:30 PM ET
NEW YORK For much of the week, much of the
U.S. press paid little attention to the highly classified British memo, leaked
to a British newspaper, which seems to reveal that President Bush decided by
summer 2002 to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and was determined to
ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.
That changed on Friday, when Knight Ridder circulated a lengthy report on the
memo by Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott.
The memo was first disclosed earlier this week by the Sunday Times of London. It
has not been disavowed by the British government. A White House official told
Knight Ridder that the administration wouldn't comment on the leaked document.
Meanwhile, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the top Democrat on the House Judiciary
Committee, has gained 88 signatures on a letter among fellow Democrats asking
the White House for an explanation of the memo. Among other things, he wants to
know: “Did the Administration lie to the American people about its intentions
with respect to Iraq? Did the Administration deliberately manipulate
intelligence to deceive the American people about the strength of its case for
war?”
The memo reports on a U.S. visit by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's
MI-6 intelligence service. “The visit took place while the Bush administration
was declaring to Americans that no decision had been made to go to war,” Knight
Ridder observed today.
The MI-6 chief's account of his U.S. visit was paraphrased this way: "There was
a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable.
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the
conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence
and facts were being fixed around the policy. ... There was little discussion in
Washington of the aftermath after military action."
Strobel and Wolcott noted that the White House has repeatedly denied accusations
by top foreign officials that intelligence estimates were manipulated.
But they report that a former senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, called it "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired"
during Dearlove's visit to Washington.
The latest
from Knight-Ridder, appearing in the Chicago Tribune
By Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers
May 8, 2005
WASHINGTON -- A Michigan congressman is seeking more information from President
Bush about a classified British memo, leaked during Britain's recent election
campaign, that claims the president decided by summer 2002 to overthrow Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence
data supported his policy.
The memo, in which British foreign policy aide Matthew Rycroft summarized a July
23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair with top security advisers,
reports on a U.S. visit by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's MI-6
intelligence service.
The memo does not specify which Bush administration officials met with Dearlove.
The visit took place while the Bush administration was saying publicly that no
decision had been made to go to war.
Rep. John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is
circulating a letter asking Bush for an explanation, an aide said.
The MI-6 chief's account of his U.S. visit was paraphrased by the memo: "There
was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable.
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the
conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence
and facts were being fixed around the policy. ... There was little discussion in
Washington of the aftermath after military action."
No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the March 2003
invasion.
The White House repeatedly has denied accusations that intelligence estimates
were manipulated.
The memo, first disclosed in full by the Sunday Times of London, hasn't been
disavowed by the British government.
A White House official said the administration wouldn't comment on the document.
Copyright © 2005, Knight-Ridder/Tribune (KRT)
**********
But the Major Media like the New York Times and Washington Post continues to ignore the story!
This one from a web site called “Media Matters”
May 9, 2005
Readers complain, but Wash. Post ombudsman mum on lack of coverage of U.K.-Iraq memo
In his weekly column, Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler reported without comment that readers had criticized the newspaper for ignoring a leaked British memo on the Iraq war published in the British Sunday Times.
Getler's failure to offer a judgment about the Post's editorial decision is remarkable, not only because he regularly responds in his column to reader criticisms, but because of the explosive content of the memo. The memo indicates that Britain's intelligence minister reported after a trip to the United States that President Bush had decided to go to war in Iraq in the summer of 2002, and "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around" the decision that had already been made. In contrast to the U.S. media, U.K. news outlets devoted considerable coverage to the memo, and its disclosure reportedly had a significant impact on the Labour Party's loss of seats in the House of Commons.
Yet Getler simply reported that he had received reader complaints and moved on.
The Post referenced the memo only twice prior to Getler's column: in the May 5 edition of Tina Brown's syndicated column -- which appeared in the paper's Style section -- and in a May 6 article recapping Blair's re-election.
By the end of the week, readers had criticized the Post for this glaring lack of coverage. Perhaps Getler decided that because the Post's coverage was in line with much of the U.S. media, which largely ignored the memo, the Post's failure did not merit his comment. Here's Getler's minimalist treatment:
A handful of readers last week also faulted the paper for not following up on a London Sunday Times disclosure of a secret memo by a foreign policy aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair after a Bush-Blair meeting in July 2002, eight months before the invasion of Iraq. It said, in part: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam [Hussein], through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Getler's handling of this issue contrasts with his usual approach. He typically notes readers' objections and then provides his own brief evaluation of the merits of their criticisms. In the same May 8 column, Getler mentioned three other instances in which readers took issue with the Post's reporting during the previous week. In each case, he commented on the merits:
Compared with most weeks, this past one was relatively quiet on the complaint front. There were challenges, as there are almost every week, about how the paper handles the Social Security debate. For example, are reporters allowing President Bush to get away with claiming that the system is "on the path to bankruptcy" by 2041, as he said at his April 28 news conference?
The next day's stories pointed out that critics say that claim is misleading. Readers say it isn't just critics. It's a fact that the Social Security board of trustees say that in 2041, tax income would still cover 74 percent of the costs of the system. Others say the truth depends on the definition of the word "bankrupt." Some companies continue to do business while in bankruptcy, but the White House points out that bankruptcy means "having insufficient assets to cover one's debts," which, they say, applies to the system in 2042. There is not room in every story to explain this dispute in full. But some effort to keep readers aware of it seems necessary every time.
Some readers also complained that the headline above the news conference story, "Bush Social Security Plan Would Cut Future Benefits," was unfair. They pointed out that the president said, "I propose a system where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off." That's true. But one could argue that it is also true, and more relevant to about 70 percent of wage earners, that, as the headline said in blunt terms and accompanying stories made clear in more detail, currently scheduled or promised benefits would be reduced for the great majority of recipients under such a proposal.
There were a handful of e-mails and calls last week about one phrase in a well-reported and documented front-page story last Sunday by Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi about Washington super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a new federal investigation into whether a deal involving a fleet of gambling casino ships involved bank fraud. The phrase came 13 paragraphs into the story. It described Abramoff as, "A smooth-talking political power player who was an Orthodox Jew." There are many other important characters in the story, but Abramoff is the only one whose religion is referred to.
Editors say: "Jack Abramoff has made his religion a prominent part of his public profile, therefore we felt it was important to mention it when we were doing a quick summary of his biographical information. We meant in no way to slight Abramoff's religion or to connect it to any of the current controversies involving him. We noted in introducing this that he is 'a study in contradictions,' then lay out facts commonly presented when his bio is being summed up. We put these facts in contrast to each other, political power player vs. Orthodox Jew, Hollywood producer vs. top lobbyist, to show that he combines many traits that do not usually coexist in one individual. One of Abramoff's points is that he is living evidence that people with his religious beliefs can thrive and find common cause with conservatives in the Republican Party." That may be true, but it is not explained in this particular story. So I'm with the readers in that the relevance test didn't seem to be met.
— J.K.
Conyers letter to Bush
Eighty-eight members of Congress have signed a letter authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) calling on President Bush to answer questions about a secret U.S.-UK agreement to attack Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.
In a letter, Conyers and other members say they are disappointed the mainstream media has not touched the revelations.
"Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the United States was too busy with wall-to-wall coverage of a "runaway bride" to cover a bombshell report out of the British newspapers," Conyers writes. "The London Times reports that the British government and the United States government had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in 2002, before authorization was sought for such an attack in Congress, and had discussed creating pretextual justifications for doing so."
"The Times reports, based on a newly discovered document, that in 2002 British Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a meeting in which he expressed his support for "regime change" through the use of force in Iraq and was warned by the nation's top lawyer that such an action would be illegal," he adds. "Blair also discussed the need for America to "create" conditions to justify the war."
The members say they are seeking an inquiry.
"This should not be allowed to fall down the memory hole during wall-to-wall coverage of the Michael Jackson trial and a runaway bride," he remarks. "To prevent that from occurring, I am circulating the following letter among my House colleagues and asking them to sign on to it."
The letter follows.
###
May 5, 2005
The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States of America The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
We write because of troubling revelations in the Sunday London Times apparently confirming that the United States and Great Britain had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in the summer of 2002, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action. While various individuals have asserted this to be the case before, including Paul O'Neill, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Richard Clarke, a former National Security Council official, they have been previously dismissed by your Administration. However, when this story was divulged last weekend, Prime Minister Blair's representative claimed the document contained "nothing new." If the disclosure is accurate, it raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own Administration.
The Sunday Times obtained a leaked document with the minutes of a secret meeting from highly placed sources inside the British Government. Among other things, the document revealed:
* Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a July 2002 meeting, at which he discussed military options, having already committed himself to supporting President Bush's plans for invading Iraq.
* British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that the case for war was "thin" as "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran."
* A separate secret briefing for the meeting said that Britain and America had to "create" conditions to justify a war.
* A British official "reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
As a result of this recent disclosure, we would like to know the following:
1) Do you or anyone in your Administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?
We have of course known for some time that subsequent to the invasion there have been a variety of varying reasons proffered to justify the invasion, particularly since the time it became evident that weapons of mass destruction would not be found. This leaked document - essentially acknowledged by the Blair government - is the first confirmation that the rationales were shifting well before the invasion as well.
Given the importance of this matter, we would ask that you respond to this inquiry as promptly as possible. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Members who have already signed letter:
Neil Abercrombie
Brian Baird
Tammy Baldwin
Xavier Becerra
Shelley Berkley
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Sanford Bishop
Earl Blumenauer
Corrine Brown
Sherrod Brown
G.K. Butterfield
Emanuel Cleaver
James Clyburn
John Conyers
Jim Cooper
Elijah Cummings
Danny Davis
Peter DeFazio
Diana DeGette
Bill Delahunt
Rosa DeLauro
Lloyd Doggett
Sam Farr
Bob Filner
Harold Ford, Jr.
Barney Frank
Al Green
Raul Grijalva
Louis Gutierrez
Alcee Hastings
Maurice Hinchey
Rush Holt
Jay Inslee
Sheila Jackson Lee
Jessie Jackson Jr.
Marcy Kaptur
Patrick Kennedy
Dale Kildee
Carolyn Kilpatrick
Dennis Kucinich
William Lacy Clay
Barbara Lee
John Lewis
Zoe Lofgren
Donna M. Christensen
Carolyn Maloney
Ed Markey
Carolyn McCarthy
Jim McDermott
James McGovern
Cynthia McKinney
Martin Meehan
Kendrick Meek
Gregory Meeks
Michael Michaud
George Miller
Gwen S. Moore
James Moran
Jerrold Nadler
Grace Napolitano
James Oberstar
John Olver
Major Owens
Frank Pallone
Donald Payne
Charles Rangel
Bobby Rush
Bernie Sanders
Linda Sanchez
Jan Schakowsky
Jose Serrano
Ike Skelton
Louise Slaughter
Hilda Solis
Pete Stark
Ellen Tauscher
Bennie Thompson
Edolphus Towns
Stephanie Tubbs Jones
Chris Van Hollen
Nydia Velazquez
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Maxine Waters
Diane Watson
Melvin Watt
Robert Wexler
Lynn Woolsey
David Wu
Albert R. Wynn
To read the letter in PDF format, including signatures, click here.
Article originally published May 5, 2005.
*********
*********
Finally, after almost two weeks the Los Angeles Times chimes in:
Meanwhile, back in Iraq. I was going to leave out of this column everything about how we got into Iraq, or whether it was wise, and or whether the infamous "they" knowingly lied to us. (Although I did plan to point out I would be nobly refraining from poking at that pus-riddled question.)
Since I believe one of our greatest strengths as Americans is shrewd practicality, I thought it was time we moved past the now unhelpful, "How did we get into his mess?" to the more utilitarian, "What the hell do we do now?"
However, I cannot let this astounding Downing Street memo go unmentioned.
On May 1, the Sunday Times of London printed a secret memo that went to the defense secretary, foreign secretary, attorney general and other high officials. It is the minutes of their meeting on Iraq with Tony Blair. The memo was written by Matthew Rycroft, a Downing Street foreign policy aide. It has been confirmed as legitimate and is dated July 23, 2002. I suppose the correct cliché is "smoking gun."
"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. (There it is.) The NSC (National Security Council) had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
After some paragraphs on tactical considerations, Rycroft reports, "No decisions had been taken, but he (British defense secretary) thought the most likely timing in U.S. minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the U.S. congressional elections.
"The foreign secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the U.N. weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.
"The attorney general said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention or UNSC authorization. The first and second could not be the base in this case."
There is much more in the memo, which can be found easily online. What's difficult now is placing the memo in the timeframe. Can you remember how little you knew about a war with Iraq in July 2002? Most of us who opposed the war concluded some time ago this was the way it went down. There was plenty of evidence, though nothing this direct and cold. Think of the difference it would have made if we had known all this three years ago. Now? The memo was a huge story in Britain, but is almost unreported here.
The memo does get us some forwarder. At least it finally settles this ridiculous debate about how Dear Leader Bush just wanted to bring democracy all along and we did it all for George Washington.
Enough said. What to do? Now that we're there, at least we're on the right side, not even withstanding the disgusting Ahmed Chalabi as oil minister. Unfortunately, our very support for the good guys is making it much harder for them. A tactical catch-22. I was impressed by the premise of Reza Aslan's new book, "No God but God," which is that all of Islam is undergoing a struggle between the modernists and the traditionalists, between reformers and reactionaries.
But in Iraq, which already had a secular state, we have the additional complication of sectarian/ethnic divisions -- your Sunnis, your Shiites, your Kurds -- not to mention, the tribalism within those divisions. (Am I bitter enough to point out once again that Paul Wolfowitz said under oath, "There is no history of ethnic strife in Iraq"? You bet your ass I am.)
Our most basic problem in-country is that having the U.S. of A. on your side automatically makes you about as popular as a socialist in the Texas Legislature: We are working against the guys we want to win by supporting them. This requires some serious skulling but is not, in politics, all that unusual a pickle.
There is a political solution. Like all politics, it requires a deal. What about letting the interim government make a deal with the Sunnis for us to withdraw -- as in, "You cooperate with us, and we'll get the Americans out of here for you." We can't make that deal, but the Iraqis can.