[Mb-hair] Memos Show British Fretting over Iraq War By ThomasWagner The Associated Press

[Robin McNamara]

Michael

Are we really thinking about people "fretting" over the war, what a fuckin' 
joke that is.

Love forever
Robin





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Butler" <michael at michaelbutler.com>
To: "Civic" <mb-civic at islandlists.com>; "HAIR List" 
<mb-hair at islandlists.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 8:37 PM
Subject: [Mb-hair] Memos Show British Fretting over Iraq War By ThomasWagner 
The Associated Press


>    Go to Original
>
>    Memos Show British Fretting over Iraq War
>    By Thomas Wagner
>    The Associated Press
>
>    Saturday 18 June 2005
>
>    When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined 
> with
> Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the then-U.S. national 
> security
> adviser didn't want to discuss Osama bin Laden or al-Qadir. She wanted to
> talk about "regime change" in Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led
> invasion more than a year later.
>
>    President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried 
> the
> White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret
> Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about
> Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein.
>
>    In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter
> Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and
> compelling military reason for war.
>
>    "U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so 
> far
> frankly unconvincing," Ricketts says in the memo. "For Iraq, `regime 
> change'
> does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."
>
>    The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam's
> alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was determined 
> to
> go to war as America's top ally, even though his government thought a
> pre-emptive attack may be illegal under international law.
>
>    "The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's
> WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September," said a typed
> copy of a March 22, 2002 memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press 
> and
> written to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
>
>    "But even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programs will not show much
> advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW (chemical or
> biological weapons) fronts: the programs are extremely worrying but have
> not, as far as we know, been stepped up."
>
>    Details from Rice's dinner conversation also are included in one of the
> secret memos from 2002, which reveal British concerns about both the
> invasion and poor postwar planning by the Bush administration, which 
> critics
> say has allowed the Iraqi insurgency to rage.
>
>    The eight memos - all labeled "secret" or "confidential" - were first
> obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in
> The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.
>
>    Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained
> the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying
> the originals.
>
>    The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have
> circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies said
> their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity 
> because
> of the secret nature of the material.
>
>    The Sunday Times this week reported that lawyers told the British
> government that U.S. and British bombing of Iraq in the months before the
> war was illegal under international law. That report, also by Smith, noted
> that almost a year before the war started, they began to strike more
> frequently.
>
>    The newspaper quoted Lord Goodhart, vice president of the International
> Commission of Jurists, as backing the Foreign Office lawyers' view that
> aircraft could only patrol the no-fly zones to deter attacks by Saddam's
> forces.
>
>    Goodhart said that if "the purpose was to soften up Iraq for a future
> invasion or even to intimidate Iraq, the coalition forces were acting
> without lawful authority," the Sunday Times reported.
>
>    The eight documents reported earlier total 36 pages and range from
> 10-page and eight-page studies on military and legal options in Iraq, to
> brief memorandums from British officials and the minutes of a private
> meeting held by Blair and his top advisers.
>
>    Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert who teaches at Queen Mary College, 
> University
> of London, said the documents confirmed what post-invasion investigations
> have found.
>
>    "The documents show what official inquiries in Britain already have,
> that the case of weapons of mass destruction was based on thin 
> intelligence
> and was used to inflate the evidence to the level of mendacity," Dodge 
> said.
> "In going to war with Bush, Blair defended the special relationship 
> between
> the two countries, like other British leaders have. But he knew he was
> taking a huge political risk at home. He knew the war's legality was
> questionable and its unpopularity was never in doubt."
>
>    Dodge said the memos also show Blair was aware of the postwar
> instability that was likely among Iraq's complex mix of Sunnis, Shiites 
> and
> Kurds once Saddam was defeated.
>
>    The British documents confirm, as well, that "soon after 9/11 happened,
> the starting gun was fired for the invasion of Iraq," Dodge said.
>
>    Speculation about if and when that would happen ran throughout 2002.
>
>    On Jan. 29, Bush called Iraq, Iran and North Korea "an axis of evil."
> U.S. newspapers began reporting soon afterward that a U.S.-led war with 
> Iraq
> was possible.
>
>    On Oct. 16, the U.S. Congress voted to authorize Bush to go to war
> against Iraq. On Feb. 5, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
> presented the Bush administration's case about Iraq's weapons to the U.N.
> Security Council. On March 19-20, the U.S.-led invasion began.
>
>    Bush and Blair both have been criticized at home since their WMD claims
> about Iraq proved false. But both have been re-elected, defending the
> conflict for removing a brutal dictator and promoting democracy in Iraq.
> Both administrations have dismissed the memos as old news.
>
>    Details of the memos appeared in papers early last month but the news 
> in
> Britain quickly turned to the election that returned Blair to power. In 
> the
> United States, however, details of the memos' contents reignited a
> firestorm, especially among Democratic critics of Bush.
>
>    It was in a March 14, 2002, memo that Blair's chief foreign policy
> adviser, David Manning, told the prime minister about the dinner he had 
> just
> had with Rice in Washington.
>
>    "We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq," wrote Manning, who's now
> British ambassador to the United States. Rice is now Bush's secretary of
> state.
>
>    "It is clear that Bush is grateful for your (Blair's) support and has
> registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in
> your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament
> and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States.
> And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we pursued 
> regime
> change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. 
> Failure
> was not an option."
>
>    Manning said, "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed." But 
> he
> also said there were signs of greater awareness of the practical
> difficulties and political risks.
>
>    Blair was to meet with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on April 
> 8,
> and Manning told his boss: "No doubt we need to keep a sense of 
> perspective.
> But my talks with Condi convinced me that Bush wants to hear your views on
> Iraq before taking decisions. He also wants your support. He is still
> smarting from the comments by other European leaders on his Iraq policy."
>
>    A July 21 briefing paper given to officials preparing for a July 23
> meeting with Blair says officials must "ensure that the benefits of action
> outweigh the risks."
>
>    "In particular we need to be sure that the outcome of the military
> action would match our objective... A postwar occupation of Iraq could 
> lead
> to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made 
> clear,
> the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point."
>
>    The British worried that, "Washington could look to us to share a
> disproportionate share of the burden. Further work is required to define
> more precisely the means by which the desired end state would be created, 
> in
> particular what form of government might replace Saddam Hussein's regime 
> and
> the time scale within which it would be possible to identify a successor."
>
>    In the March 22 memo from Foreign Office political director Ricketts to
> Foreign Secretary Straw, Ricketts outlined how to win public and
> parliamentary support for a war in Britain: "We have to be convincing 
> that:
> the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to 
> die
> for; it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other
> proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including
> Iran)."
>
>    Blair's government has been criticized for releasing an intelligence
> dossier on Iraq before the war that warned Saddam could launch chemical or
> biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice.
>
>    On March 25 Straw wrote a memo to Blair, saying he would have a tough
> time convincing the governing Labour Party that a pre-emptive strike 
> against
> Iraq was legal under international law.
>
>    "If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the U.S. would
> now be considering military action against Iraq," Straw wrote. "In 
> addition,
> there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with OBL (Osama bin 
> Laden)
> and al-Qaida."
>
>    He also questioned stability in a post-Saddam Iraq: "We have also to
> answer the big question - what will this action achieve? There seems to be 
> a
> larger hole in this than on anything."
>
>
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