[Peace-discuss] Downing street memo

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

The Real News in the Downing Street Memos
By Michael Smith, Michael Smith writes on defense issues for
the Sunday Times of London.

It is now nine months since I obtained the first of the
"Downing Street memos," thrust into my hand by someone who
asked me to meet him in a quiet watering hole in London for
what I imagined would just be a friendly drink.

At the time, I was defense correspondent of the London Daily
Telegraph, and a staunch supporter of the decision to oust
Saddam Hussein. The source was a friend. He'd given me a few
stories before but nothing nearly as interesting as this.

The six leaked documents I took away with me that night were
to change completely my opinion of the decision to go to war
and the honesty of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.

They focused on the period leading up to the Crawford, Texas,
summit between Blair and Bush in early April 2002, and were
most striking for the way in which British officials warned
the prime minister, with remarkable prescience, what a mess
post-war Iraq would become. Even by the cynical standards of
realpolitik, the decision to overrule this expert advice
seemed to be criminal.

The second batch of leaks arrived in the middle of this year's
British general election, by which time I was writing for a
different newspaper, the Sunday Times. These documents, which
came from a different source, related to a crucial meeting of
Blair's war Cabinet on July 23, 2002. The timing of the leak
was significant, with Blair clearly in electoral difficulties
because of an unpopular war.

I did not then regard the now-infamous memo — the one that
includes the minutes of the July 23 meeting — as the most
important. My main article focused on the separate briefing
paper for those taking part, prepared beforehand by Cabinet
Office experts.

It said that Blair agreed at Crawford that "the UK would
support military action to bring about regime change." Because
this was illegal, the officials noted, it was "necessary to
create the conditions in which we could legally support
military action."

But Downing Street had a "clever" plan that it hoped would
trap Hussein into giving the allies the excuse they needed to
go to war. It would persuade the U.N. Security Council to give
the Iraqi leader an ultimatum to let in the weapons inspectors.

Although Blair and Bush still insist the decision to go to the
U.N. was about averting war, one memo states that it was, in
fact, about "wrong-footing" Hussein into giving them a legal
justification for war.

British officials hoped the ultimatum could be framed in words
that would be so unacceptable to Hussein that he would reject
it outright. But they were far from certain this would work,
so there was also a Plan B.

American media coverage of the Downing Street memo has largely
focused on the assertion by Sir Richard Dearlove, head of
British foreign intelligence, that war was seen as inevitable
in Washington, where "the intelligence and facts were being
fixed around the policy."

But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It
quotes British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that
"the U.S. had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put
pressure on the regime." This we now realize was Plan B.

Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone
were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a
reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a
full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of
the conflict.

British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on
southern Iraq in 2002 show that although virtually none were
used in March and April, an average of 10 tons a month were
dropped between May and August.

But these initial "spikes of activity" didn't have the desired
effect. The Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the
excuse Bush and Blair needed. So at the end of August, the
allies dramatically intensified the bombing into what was
effectively the initial air war.

The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied
aircraft shot up to 54.6 tons in September alone, with the
increased rates continuing into 2003.

In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March
2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six
weeks before Congress approved military action against Iraq.

The way in which the intelligence was "fixed" to justify war
is old news.

The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the
cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret,
illegal air war without the backing of Congress.
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-344-5812
homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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