George W. Bush

[Moses]

May 01, 2005
The secret Downing Street memo

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 [Straw] 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)

[Moses]

Fri, May. 06, 2005

Memo: Bush made intel fit Iraq policy
By WARREN P. STROBEL and JOHN WALCOTT
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.

The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.

The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war.

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable," the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," weapons of mass destruction.

The memo said "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

The White House has repeatedly denied accusations made by several top foreign officials that it manipulated intelligence estimates to justify an invasion of Iraq.

It has instead pointed to the conclusions of two studies, one by the Senate Intelligence Committee and one by a presidentially appointed panel, that cite serious failures by the CIA and other agencies in judging Saddam's weapons programs.

The principal U.S. intelligence analysis, called a National Intelligence Estimate, wasn't completed until October 2002, well after the United States and United Kingdom had apparently decided military force should be used to overthrow Saddam's regime.

The newly disclosed memo, which was first reported by the Sunday Times of London, hasn't been disavowed by the British government. A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington referred queries to another official, who didn't return calls for comment on Thursday.

A former senior U.S. official called it "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

A White House official said the administration wouldn't comment on leaked British documents.

In July 2002, and well afterward, top Bush administration foreign policy advisers were insisting that "there are no plans to attack Iraq on the president's desk."

But the memo quotes British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, a close colleague of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, as saying that "Bush had made up his mind to take military action."

Straw is quoted as having his doubts about the Iraqi threat.

"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," the memo reported he said.

Straw reportedly proposed that Saddam be given an ultimatum to readmit United Nations weapons inspectors, which could help justify the eventual use of force.

Powell in August 2002 persuaded Bush to make the case against Saddam at the United Nations and to push for renewed weapons inspections.

But there were deep divisions within the White House over that course of action. The British document says that the National Security Council, then led by Condoleezza Rice, "had no patience with the U.N. route."

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is circulating a letter among fellow Democrats asking Bush for an explanation of the document's charges, an aide said.

---

© 2005 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.thestate.com

[Moses]

www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-memogate12may12,1,7966962.story

THE WORLD

Indignation Grows in U.S. Over British Prewar Documents

Critics of Bush call them proof that he and Blair never saw diplomacy as an option with Hussein.
By John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writer

May 12, 2005
LONDON — Reports in the British press this month based on documents indicating that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair had conditionally agreed by July 2002 to invade Iraq appear to have blown over quickly in Britain.

But in the United States, where the reports at first received scant attention, there has been growing indignation among critics of the Bush White House, who say the documents help prove that the leaders made a secret decision to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nearly a year before launching their attack, shaped intelligence to that aim and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy.

The documents, obtained by Michael Smith, a defense specialist writing for the Sunday Times of London, include a memo of the minutes of a meeting July 23, 2002, between Blair and his intelligence and military chiefs; a briefing paper for that meeting and a Foreign Office legal opinion prepared before an April 2002 summit between Blair and Bush in Texas.

The picture that emerges from the documents is of a British government convinced of the U.S. desire to go to war and Blair's agreement to it, subject to several specific conditions.

Since Smith's report was published May 1, Blair's Downing Street office has not disputed the documents' authenticity. Asked about them Wednesday, a Blair spokesman said the report added nothing significant to the much-investigated record of the lead-up to the war.

"At the end of the day, nobody pushed the diplomatic route harder than the British government…. So the circumstances of this July discussion very quickly became out of date," said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

The leaked minutes sum up the July 23 meeting, at which Blair, top security advisors and his attorney general discussed Britain's role in Washington's plan to oust Hussein. The minutes, written by Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide, indicate general thoughts among the participants about how to create a political and legal basis for war. The case for military action at the time was "thin," Foreign Minister Jack Straw was characterized as saying, and Hussein's government posed little threat.

Labeled "secret and strictly personal — U.K. eyes only," the minutes begin with the head of the British intelligence service, MI6, who is identified as "C," saying he had returned from Washington, where there had been a "perceptible shift in attitude. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy."

Straw agreed that Bush seemed determined to act militarily, although the timing was not certain.

"But the case was thin," the minutes say. "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capacity was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Straw then proposed to "work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam" to permit United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq. "This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force," he said, according to the minutes.

Blair said, according to the memo, "that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors."

"If the political context were right, people would support regime change," Blair said. "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."

In addition to the minutes, the Sunday Times report referred to a Cabinet briefing paper that was given to participants before the July 23 meeting. It stated that Blair had already promised Bush cooperation earlier, at the April summit in Texas.

"The U.K. would support military action to bring about regime change," the Sunday Times quoted the briefing as saying.
Excerpts from the paper, which Smith provided to the Los Angeles Times, said Blair had listed conditions for war, including that "efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine crisis was quiescent," and options to "eliminate Iraq's WMD through the U.N. weapons inspectors" had been exhausted.

The briefing paper said the British government should get the U.S. to put its military plans in a "political framework."

"This is particularly important for the U.K. because it is necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action," it says.

In a letter to Bush last week, 89 House Democrats expressed shock over the documents. They asked if the papers were authentic and, if so, whether they proved that the White House had agreed to invade Iraq months before seeking Congress' OK.

"If the disclosure is accurate, it raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of our own administration," the letter says.

"While the president of the United States was telling the citizens and the Congress that they had no intention to start a war with Iraq, they were working very close with Tony Blair and the British leadership at making this a foregone conclusion," the letter's chief author, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, said Wednesday.

If the documents are real, he said, it is "a huge problem" in terms of an abuse of power. He said the White House had not yet responded to the letter.

Both Blair and Bush have denied that a decision on war was made in early 2002. The White House and Downing Street maintain that they were preparing for military operations as an option, but that the option to not attack also remained open until the war began March 20, 2003.

In January 2002, Bush described Iraq as a member of an "axis of evil," but the sustained White House push for Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions did not come until September of that year. That month, Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly to outline a case against Hussein's government, and he sought a bipartisan congressional resolution authorizing the possible use of force.
In November 2002, the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution demanding that Iraq readmit weapons inspectors.

An effort to pass a second resolution expressly authorizing the use of force against Iraq did not succeed.
*

---

Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

[camaxtle]

Is there any hope that this can be used to it´s full capacity against Bush and these sleezeballs in power?

[Moses]

I think the War Party has too much of a lock on the country, but the valiant effort of the 89 is at least a sound in the conspiratorial silence.

[nana]

Published on Friday, May 13, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Stop the Crime of the Century
by David Michael Green
www.commondreams.org/views05/0513-20.htm

In Iraq, there is a crime of breathtaking proportions taking place. Breathtaking, but necessarily surprising. We know from the historical record that governments will lie and deceive, and we've rarely seen one as immoral and venal as the Bush administration.

What has turned this crime into an astonishing demonstration of the depth of American democracy's decay is the complicity of the media establishment in hiding the original crime, and in thus doing so, ripping a gaping hole in the fabric of our political system.

Did you know that there now exists in the public domain a 'smoking gun' memo, which proves that everything the Bush administration said about the Iraq invasion was a lie? If you live in Britain you probably do, but if you live in the United States, chances are minuscule that you would be aware of this.

Think about that for a second. Apart from 9/11, has there been a more important story in the last decade than that the president lied to the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq, and then proceeded to plunge the country into an illegal war which has alienated the rest of the world, lit a fire under the war's victims and the Islamic world generally, turning them into enemy combatants, locked up virtually all American land forces in a war without end in sight, cost $300 billion and counting, taken over 1600 American lives on top of more than 15,000 gravely wounded, and killed perhaps 100,000 Iraqis?

Could there be a bigger story? "How Do Japanese Dump Trash?", perhaps, which ran on page one of today's (May 12) Times?

Of course not. But then how is it that this is not being reported in the American mainstream media? How is it that the two organs most responsible for coverage of political developments in this country - the New York Times and the Washington Post - have failed to splash this across their front pages in bold headlines, despite the fact that they clearly know of the story? How, especially, could these two papers sit on a story like this after both recently issued mea culpas for their respective failures to critically cover administration claims of bogus Iraqi threats during the period leading up to the war, thereby contributing to the war themselves?

From the Bush administration and the current generation of Republicans, I expect nothing but the most debased and vile politics. And, of course, ditto for Fox News and the rest of the overtly right-wing media. But I have been naive enough, until now, to believe that at least some of the American mainstream media has not climbed completely into bed with those destroyers of all that is decent about American democracy. Apparently I've been a fool.

Here is the story we are not being told.

Several days before their election last week (May 5), a patriot within the highest circle of British government leaked to the Times of London a memo, which proves the degree of deceit to which both the Americans and British publics have been subjected on the subject of the Iraq war. You were never supposed to see this document www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html. It is headlined in bold with this warning: "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."

The memo provides minutes from a meeting of Tony Blair's most exclusive war cabinet, held in July of 2002. In the meeting, two of Blair's top officials report on discussions they had just held in Washington with officials at the top levels of the Bush administration.

Before describing the contents of the memo, it is important to note that nobody in the British government has denied to even the slightest degree the authenticity of this document. A highly placed American source has verified, off the record, that it is completely accurate in its recounting of the events described. And Tony Blair's only comment has been that there is 'nothing new' contained in the memo. This could not be more false. The memo proves beyond doubt the following: * The Bush administration had decided by July 2002, at the latest, to invade Iraq. The memo says that "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action..." Later in the memo it notes that "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action". This means the claims that the president did not have a war plan on his desk at that time are now proven lies. It means that the whole kabuki dance of going to Congress, going to the UN, sending over weapons inspectors, pulling them out before they could finish their work, requiring Iraq to report to the Security Council on its weapons of mass destruction, then immediately rejecting their report as incomplete and deceitful - all of this - was a completely counterfeit exercise conducting for public relations purposes only. It also means that when former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former terrorism czar Richard Clarke reported that Bush had planned to attack Iraq from the beginning, they - rather than the administration which was personally savaging them as loonies - were telling the truth.

* The Bush and Blair administrations knew that the argument for war against Iraq was weak. As Foreign Secretary Jack Straw notes in the meeting, "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". This is proof that Iraq was never anything like the serious threat it was portrayed to be before the war, and that both administrations knew that it was no threat, but knowingly and completely oversold the necessity for the war with their massive phalanx of lies and distortions.

* Because the case was thin, the war would have to be "...justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD". This proves that former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz wasn't kidding when he let slip that the weapons of mass destruction argument was decided on by the administration for "bureaucratic reasons", meaning a rationale that all the leading actors within the administration could agree on as the most effective public relations device for marketing the war.

* Both the Bush and Blair administrations manipulated intelligence to get what they wanted in order to justify the war, and knew that they were doing precisely that. As the memo states, "...the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". This is the most \ remarkable statement of all, as it makes clear that the decision to invade had nothing to do with facts or any sort of real threat. Rather, it was simply a preference of the Bush administration (and probably just a personal one for Bush), which then became its policy, for which they then twisted and fabricated information and disinformation in order to sell the war to a rightly skeptical public.

* The war was illegal. Kofi Annan and the international community clearly believed that the war was a violation of international law. But we now also know that the British Attorney-General, who has to rule on this point (the question of the legality of launching a war is traditionally far less significant, unfortunately, in the American political tradition), "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 [which was never ultimately obtained from the Security Council]. 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 change of course." Yes, of course. Then, again, if it didn't, one could always just lie about it.

* Knowing that the war was neither legal nor morally justifiable, the American and British governments therefore sought to find a way to make the war politically acceptable by baiting Saddam. As the memo notes, "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". And, "The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors". And, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change".

* Well before the war was 'justified', even in the bogus sense of Washington's and London's inspections and UN resolutions game, it had lready begun. The memo states that the "US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime".

* Finally, it is worth noting that, even putting legal and moral questions aside, the memo also substantiates the sheer strategic incompetence of the administration, a failure which has, of course, produced excessive loss of life. It states that "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action".

Let's review the bidding here.

We now have definitive, verified and undenied evidence documenting a panoply of lies told to the American and world publics about the invasion of Iraq, a bloody war which was neither legally nor morally justified, despite overt attempts to make it so by those who wished to launch it.

On top of that crime, we can now also add that of America's fourth estate, which has completely abdicated its role and responsibility to present this crucial bombshell of information to the public.

It gets worse, however. Eighty-nine members of Congress have taken note of the items described above, as well as a separate secret briefing for Blair's meeting, in which it was agreed that "Britain and America had to 'create' conditions to justify a war", and have sent a letter to the president (http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/letters/bushsecretmemoltr5505.pdf), demanding a response.

And, yet, still there is no coverage from our press. It appears that demanding that the government respect the will of the people is no longer enough in American democracy. We must now also carry the burden of demanding that the media do its job and cover developments which are unfavorable to the national kleptocracy of which these giant media corporations have become a part.

That noise you hear? It's the sound of America's Founders spinning in their graves. And well they should, for this scenario is precisely the massive concentration of power they most feared. All branches of the government are now in the hands of the same party (meaning, effectively, there virtually are no branches any longer). The so-called opposition party facilitates Republican rule through the flattery of imitation, when it hasn't gone into hiding instead. The public is frightened and ill-informed. And now this. To this hall of shame list must be added a mainstream press which a week ago seemed only biased and intimidated, but now appears entirely complicit. We are now living precisely the nightmare of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and the rest. It must stop. We cannot have a prayer of an informed public curbing the worst excesses of American government if, in fact, that public is not informed. Sad as it is, if we ever hope to reclaim American democracy, it appears we must now fight for outrageous news to be aired, if we ever expect that news to outrage.

Notwithstanding our worst horrors and fears these last four years, American democracy is in deeper trouble than we knew. Now is the time for patriots to act.

We must begin by demanding coverage of this explosive evidence by the leading organs of American journalism. If the American people remain too jaded or frightened to demand the heads of those who deceived them so thoroughly, they're entitled to inherit the consequences of their own failures. However, they cannot make that choice until they know the facts.

Please therefore, for the sake of innocent Iraqis, for the sake of American soldiers, and for the sake of American democracy, do two things 'write now':

* First, send a message to the New York Times and the Washington Post, demanding that they cover this most significant of stories. Top brass at the New York Times can be emailed at the following addresses: Executive Editor Bill Keller at [e-mail], and Managing Editor Jill Abramson at [e-mail]. For the Washington Post, try National Editor Michael Abramowitz at [e-mail], and Associate Editor Robert Kaiser at [e-mail].

* Next, forward this article on to everybody you know, and ask them to write the Times and the Post as well, and then to forward this article in turn to everyone they know. With some luck, perhaps we can achieve a critical mass which can no longer be ignored by these papers, with the electronic media then to follow.

In any case, we are evidently going have to take this country back ourselves, without even the benefit of a competent media to report the news.

Fortunately, we possess the greatest weapon of all, the truth.

David Michael Green ([e-mail]) is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.

[Moses]

I admire David Michael Green's effort here. At least the Post and the Times should be asked why there is a news blackout on the story. However, both the Times and the Post were actively orchestrating the fixing of facts in order to go to war for Israel in the ME. The Post editorialized for it (and supports the Bolton nominatiion-- the paper is as neocon as the Telegraph, Jerusalem Post, etc.) and the Times managing editor managed the amplification of false information.

CNN was also active, and hired consultants to assist in bringing about the war, with Wolf Blitzer being the most obvious propagandist-- framing everything in terms of SH.

I have it on very good authority that in fact the media moguls had been promised by the Bush campaign before the selection of 2000, that he would invade Iraq. The media moguls had close ties to Israel and were in favor of this, and geared up to help select him, and then to orchestrate the propaganda.

People should not pay to obtain television reception of the broadcast media. They should be paid to pipe this propaganda into their homes.

[Moses]

British Intelligence Warned of Iraq War[/size]
Blair Was Told of White House's Determination to Use Military Against Hussein

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 13, 2005; A18


Seven months before the invasion of Iraq, the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein by military action and warned that in Washington intelligence was "being fixed around the policy," according to notes of a July 23, 2002, meeting with Blair at No. 10 Downing Street.

"Military action was now seen as inevitable," said the notes, summarizing a report by Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, British intelligence, who had just returned from consultations in Washington along with other senior British officials. Dearlove went on, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

"The case was thin," summarized the notes taken by a British national security aide at the meeting. "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

The notes were first disclosed last week by the Sunday Times of London, triggering criticism of Blair on the eve of the May 5 British parliamentary elections that he had decided to support an invasion of Iraq well before informing the public of his views.

The notes of the Blair meeting, attended by the prime minister's senior national security team, also disclose for the first time that Britain's intelligence boss believed that Bush had decided to go to war in mid-2002, and that he believed U.S. policymakers were trying to use the limited intelligence they had to make the Iraqi leader appear to be a bigger threat than was supported by known facts.

Although critics of the Iraq war have accused Bush and his top aides of misusing what has since been shown as limited intelligence in the prewar period, Bush's critics have been unsuccessful in getting an investigation of that matter.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has dropped its previous plan to review how U.S. policymakers used Iraq intelligence, and the president's commission on intelligence did not look into the subject because it was not authorized to do so by its charter, Laurence H. Silberman, the co-chairman, told reporters last month.

The British Butler Commission, which last year reviewed that country's intelligence performance on Iraq, also studied how that material was used by the Blair government. The panel concluded that Blair's speeches and a published dossier on Iraq used language that left "the impression that there was fuller and firmer intelligence than was the case," according to the Butler report.

It described the July 23 meeting as coming at a "key stage" in preparation for taking action against Iraq but described it primarily as a session at which Blair favored reengagement of U.N. inspectors against a background of intelligence that Hussein would not accept them unless "the threat of military action were real."

During the July 2002 time frame, Bush was working to build support in the United States for a war against Hussein, while a U.S. base in Qatar was being expanded and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was trying to get Turkey to assist in potential military action against the Iraqi leader.

A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington said he would not comment on the substance of the document.

Blair's senior advisers at the July 2002 session decided they would prepare an "ultimatum" for Iraq to permit U.N. inspectors to return, despite being told that Bush's National Security Council, then headed by Condoleezza Rice, "had no patience with the U.N. route," according to the notes. "The prime minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors."

Although Dearlove reported that the NSC had "no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record," the Blair team soon set in motion preparation of the public dossier on Iraq, which was published in late September 2002.

Another piece of the British memo has relevance now, as the United States battles an insurgency that some say was exacerbated by faulty planning for the post-invasion period. "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action," the notes say, without attributing that directly to Dearlove.

The "U.S. has already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime," the British defense secretary reported, according to the notes. Although no final decision had been made, "he 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."

As it finally worked out, the Bush administration's public campaign for supporting a possible invasion of Iraq began the next month, in late August, with speeches by Vice President Cheney, followed by a late October vote in Congress to grant the president authority to use force if necessary. Later in October, the British and the Americans introduced their resolution on Iraq in the U.N. Security Council and it passed in early November, shortly after the Nov. 2 elections.

[Moses]

Media finally begins to notice British intelligence memo

Nearly two weeks after the British Sunday Times disclosed a secret British intelligence memo that suggests that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to support its desire to wage war in Iraq -- and a week after Media Matters noted that the memo has been largely ignored by the U.S. media -- some news outlets are finally starting to take notice.

The Washington Post ran an article about the memo on page A18 of its May 13 edition, five days after Post ombudsman Michael Getler noted that readers had complained about the lack of coverage. Oddly, Getler didn't take a position on the paper's decision not to cover the memo to that point.

CNN.com ran a May 12 article that detailed the memo's contents and noted that 89 members of Congress have sent President Bush a letter about it. There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- in the CNN.com article that couldn't have been written nearly a week earlier. The Sunday Times ran its article on May 1; the members of Congress released their letter on May 6; Media Matters told readers about it the same day. But people who get their news from CNN.com didn't find out about it until May 11.

Still, CNN.com readers are better off than CNN viewers. Since last week, when we noted the network's failure to give the matter more than a passing mention, and wrote that "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," CNN has mentioned the memo only twice more -- one of them coming in another "Inside the Blogs" segment on May 12:


ABBI TATTON (CNN political producer): We mentioned before a secret British memo that came out on May 1st in a London newspaper suggesting that the Bush administration was preparing for military action in Iraq in the summer of 2002. Now liberal bloggers have been picking up on this, saying why isn't there more coverage of this in the United States? One of them is Congressman John Conyers, a Democrat of Michigan, who is one of 89 congressman who sent a letter to George Bush asking for an explanation. He's been blogging about this at his blog, ConyersBlog.us, following the coverage, seeing how much it's getting there. What he said yesterday: "Are we nearing the tipping point on the smoking gun Downing Street memo?" We'll be seeing what more he has on that.

There's something seriously wrong with a cable "news" network that virtually ignores a secret intelligence memo that suggests the Bush administration deliberately manipulated intelligence in order to support its policies; virtually ignores a letter signed by 89 members of Congress demanding an explanation -- but covers the fact that one of those congressmen writes about it on his blog. CNN's Wolf Blitzer, who boasts nightly that he brings his viewers "hard news," hasn't covered the memo; at CNN, such news is left to "Inside the Blogs."

Well, not just "Inside the Blogs": as we said, CNN mentioned the memo twice in the last week. The other mention? The dozens of CNN viewers who were watching at 9 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday, May 7, saw the following report by anchor Tony Harris:


Now, to a letter addressed to President Bush and signed by 90 Democrats in Congress. The lawmakers are asking Mr. Bush to respond to a London tabloid report. It claims the president coordinated military action in Iraq months before Congress actually authorized the action. The report cites confidential accounts of a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who reportedly committed his country to supporting a U.S.-led war.

The Democrats' letter to President Bush alleges in part, quoting now: "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."

Harris would have been hard-pressed to downplay the memo more than he did. There was no mention of the most explosive suggestion in the memo: that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to fit its agenda. Still, Harris's report was better than nothing, which is what most media outlets (we're looking at you, New York Times) have done with this story.

We'll give Conyers the last word for now:


On talk radio today, and on the Internet, there is a palpable frustration about the lack of mainstream media (or as many appropriately call it, "corporate media") coverage of the secret Downing Street memo. I share this frustration. In my view, it is inexcusable that the cable news networks and the major newspapers have failed thus far to give this story the attention it deserves. At its core, the disclosure represents a vindication of the assertions of all of us who opposed the war, and truth-telling former Administration officials who were smeared for daring to provide the public the information it is entitled to. More importantly, it shows an Administration that appears to have lied to the American people and their elected representatives, while simultaneously telling the truth to the representatives of the British people, about the most grave matter for any nation -- the decision to go to war.

CNN's president defends "Runaway Bride" coverage

Last week, we noted that while CNN paid no attention to little things like secret intelligence memos about the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence, it has plenty of time for "news" about the so-called "Runaway Bride" and "American Idol."

CNN president Jonathan Klein defended the network's coverage of those stories in an interview with Brooke Gladstone on the May 6 edition of National Public Radio's On the Media:


GLADSTONE: Well, let's talk about the other end of that gamut then. Let's talk about Monday, May 2nd. CNN Daybreak -- the rundown had "Runaway Bride." American Morning -- "Runaway Bride Could Face Criminal Charges." Live from CNN -- "Runaway Bride Back Home." Crossfire -- "Should Runaway Bride Faces Charges?" Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, Larry King, Aaron Brown -- all of them devoted at least part of their program to Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride, and Jonathan, I have to ask you -- does this fit into the roll-up-your-sleeves storytelling that you have in mind?

KLEIN: Well, sure. I mean, The New York Times covered the runaway bride too, and I'm sure I heard a story about it on NPR.

[...]

GLADSTONE: -- is the lesson here that cable news simply operates at a level of inertia and entropy that no one can change, that you throw blanket coverage at a story that really doesn't merit it?

KLEIN: No. If you were listening to me, Brooke, you would have heard me say that on some days, that story that we decide to focus on will be the runaway bride. On other days, the story will be the spread of democracy in Lebanon. We looked around. We didn't see any other network anchor in Lebanon. And then we went to Syria. And we didn't find any network anchor there, either. Now, you could criticize us for covering that story too heavily as well.

GLADSTONE: But are you saying that CNN's coverage of the runaway bride was an appropriate amount of coverage?

KLEIN: Oh, for sure. It was a fascinating story that left a lot of questions unanswered -- what drove her to this? Is this a crime?

[more at link]

[Moses]

May 14, 2005. 01:00 AM

`America kept in dark' as carnage escalates
U.S. TV accused of ignoring situation
Iraq on brink of civil war, analysts say


[size=1'TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU[/size]

WASHINGTON—When the man in the white van slowed, the group of labourers from Kut, southeast of Baghdad, approached him in the hope they would be offered work.

Instead he offered death.

As the workers approached, the man blew up his van, killing himself and the men who had tentatively moved to him in trust, sending body parts hurtling through the sky and, according to witnesses, turning the nearest hospital into a blood-stained shrine of futility, overwhelmed by the number and severity of the casualties.

The scene was played out many times over in Iraq this week, where a spike in insurgent violence has placed the country on the precipice of civil war.

More than 450 Iraqis have been slaughtered in the past two weeks in a direct challenge to a new Iraqi government, making those heady days of the January election seem like something from the distant past. The euphoria of the purple thumb, the symbol of the bravery of voters, has given way to a river of blood-red in some of the worst violence in the post-Saddam era.

"We are on the edge of civil war," said Noah Feldman, a New York University professor and chief U.S. adviser to Iraq on the writing of the country's new constitution.

Yet, somehow this sharp surge in deadly bombings, assassinations and kidnappings in Iraq has occurred largely under the radar in the United States.

No public figures have risen this week to decry this most recent carnage, no one is breaking into regular programming on cable news shows.

Perhaps Americans have simply become numb to the background hum of Iraqi violence. Perhaps the lack of graphic images on television mean that medium doesn't know how to cover the story. Perhaps, more cynically, Iraqis killing Iraqis is not as compelling a story.

The left-leaning American Progress Action Fund said in a statement yesterday

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America's most important foreign policy venture is teetering on the edge of civil war, but it is being ignored by television networks.

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"Television media — still the primary source of news for most Americans — is failing miserably," it said. "America is being kept in the dark."

While American TV viewers turn to runaway brides, fast-food fingers and the daily Michael Jackson aberration, they are missing the story of an increasingly massive foreign policy failure.

The number of car bomb attacks in Iraq jumped from 64 in February to 135 in April, a record, according to U.S. military statistics. Insurgents are reported to have stockpiled car bombs and the attacks are becoming more brazen as Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters try to provoke civil war with the Shiite majority.

"There is an apparent free flow of suicide bombers into Iraq," a Western diplomat told the London-based Guardian newspaper.


The U.S. death toll is at 1,611 and U.S. legislators this week approved funding which pushes the cost of the Iraq war beyond $250 billion (U.S.)

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, called again this week for patience.

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`The only thing that can stop civil war is to bring this insurgency under control.'

Noah Feldman, U.S. adviser to Iraq

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"One thing we know about insurgencies is that they last from, you know, three, four years to nine years," he said. "These are tough fights. And in the end, it's going to have to be the Iraqis that win this.


"If there was a magic bullet, then Gen. (George) Casey and Gen. (John) Abizaid or I, or somebody on the staff more likely, would have found it."

While U.S. authorities say they believe most of the jihadists are foreign fighters — and have launched a major offensive near the Syria border to try to choke off the influx — J. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence for the Defence Intelligence Agency, told National Public Radio this week that he believed the insurgents are 90 per cent home-grown.


He said they're a mix of former military, intelligence, police personnel and Baath party functionaries taking directions from a government-in-exile.

David Phillips of the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations and author of Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco, said the spike in the insurgency can be blamed on three factors.


He said the delay of Iraqis in convening a new government to validate the January elections, the preponderance of Shiites and Kurds in the government plus the intensification of the de-Baathification process simply backed the Sunni view that there is no role for them in the new government.

But, Phillips also points to statements from the White House that U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had intervened to try to break the cabinet stalemate as another spark.

"It reinforced the view in Iraq that (Prime Minister Ibrahim) Jaafari was merely a proxy for those people in Washington," he said.

The damage done by a decision to give Sunnis a small representation in the cabinet unveiled last month seems to have been exacerbated with the decision to appoint only two Sunnis to the 55-member committee chosen to write Iraq's permanent constitution.

It will only play to the sense of despair and disenfranchisement among Sunnis, many analysts say.

Feldman said the Shiite population in Iraq has shown patience of historic proportion in not retaliating against the Sunni attacks.

"The reason I say we are on the edge of civil war is that you can't have one if only one side is attacking," he said. "But the truth is, Shiites are only human and they will run out of patience," he said. "The only thing that can stop civil war is to bring this insurgency under control."

But to do so, he said, Iraqi security forces have to convince Sunnis that violence will not work and they should join the political process.

Sunni fighters, however, are convinced they can hasten the departure of some 139,000 American troops by starting a civil war, Feldman wrote.

Conversely, he said, should U.S. troops depart, civil war is guaranteed.

Phillips is even more pessimistic. When asked about the chances that the brakes could be put on the insurgency in the short term, he answered: "None. This insurgency will go on for years and years, regardless of what the U.S. does."

The insurgency can never be defeated by military force, he said. Instead, Iraqis have to believe that their institutions are worth defending and that defence has to come from Iraqi troops.

[Moses]

www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2486

In its June 9 issue (on sale this week), the New York Review of Books will be the first American print publication to publish the full British "smoking gun" document, the secret memorandum of the minutes of a meeting of Tony Blair's top advisors in July 2002, eight months before the Iraq War commenced. Leaked to the London Sunday Times, which first published it on May 1, the memo offers irrefutable proof of the way in which the Bush administration made its decision to invade Iraq -- without significant consultation, reasonable intelligence on Iraq, or any desire to explore ways to avoid war -- and well before seeking a Congressional or United Nations mandate of any sort.

By July, as the British officials reported, the decision to invade was already in the bag. The only real questions -- other than those involving war planning -- were how to organize the intelligence in such a way as to promote the war to come and how to finesse Congress (and the UN). While people often speak of the "road to war," in the case of the invasion of Iraq, as this document makes clear, a more accurate phrase might be "the bum's rush to war." The Review is also publishing an accompanying piece on the secret memo and what to make of it by their regular Iraq correspondent, Mark Danner, and its editors have been kind enough to allow Tomdispatch to distribute the piece early on-line.

That the Review is the first publication here to print the document is not only an honorable (and important) act, but a measure of the failure of major American papers to offer attention where it is clearly due. After all, whole government investigations have, in the past, gone in search of "smoking guns." In fact, the Bush administration spent much time searching fruitlessly for its own "smoking gun" of WMD in Iraq -- and this process was considered of front-page importance in our major papers and on the TV news. That a "smoking gun" document about the nature of the war in the making has appeared in this fashion, not in Kyrgyzstan but in England; that no one in the British or American governments has even bothered to dispute its provenance or accuracy; and that, with a few honorable exceptions like columnist Molly Ivins, that gun was allowed to lie on the ground smoking for days, hardly commented upon (except on the political internet, of course), tells us much about our present moment. Should you want to consider the miserable coverage in this country, check out FAIR's commentary on the matter.

Congressman John Conyers has just sent a letter, signed by eighty-nine Democratic congressional representatives, to the President demanding some answers to the document's revelations. And articles by good reporters in major papers finally did start to appear late this week -- but those of John Daniszewski at the Los Angeles Times and Walter Pincus at the Washington Post were typically tucked away on inside pages (meant for political news jockeys), and they had a distinctly just-the-facts-maam, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary feel to them.

But shouldn't it be a front-page story that, as Danner points out ..., all the subsequent arguments we've had to endure about the state of, and accuracy of American intelligence on Iraq, were actually beside the point? After all, as the smoking-gun memo makes perfectly clear, the decision to go to war was made before the intelligence -- good, bad, or indifferent -- was even seriously put into play. ....

Recently, Ted Rall, considering press response to a more modest smoking-gun incident -- the covered up friendly-fire death of former NFL star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan whose revelation was reported rather reluctantly on the inside pages of papers -- wrote tellingly: "For journalists supposedly dedicated to uncovering the truth and informing the public, this is exactly the opposite of how things ought to be. Corrections and exposés should always run bigger, longer and more often than initial, discredited stories." ....

The least commented upon aspect of the smoking-gun memo has been its military side. It is, in significant part, a military document, reflecting how much serious thinking and planning at the highest levels in the U.S. and Britain had already gone into the question of how to have a war by July 2002. The question of how technically to launch the "military action" -- whether by a "generated start" or a "running start" -- was, for instance, front and center. Also addressed was the mundane but crucial issue (for the Pentagon) of where, around Iraq, to base forces. "The US," reads the memo, "saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either [the generated or running start] option." Diego Garcia is the British-controlled Indian Ocean Island that was already a stationary American "aircraft carrier" and from which, 8 months later, B-2s would fly on Baghdad.

Since Danner -- whose book Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror does much to explain the nature of the fix the Bush administration now finds itself in -- covers the British document in great and fascinating detail ..., let me just add a final note: To me, perhaps the most telling line in the memo, given what's happened since, is the observation of Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of M16 (the British CIA equivalent), just back from a U.S. visit, that "[t]here was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."....