After the Downing Street Memo: The Case for Impeachment Builds
Monday, June 6th, 2005
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... 06/1328247 (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/06/1328247)
The fallout from the revelation of a secret meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior national security team appears to be growing. We take a look at the so-called "Downing Street Memo" which reveals how the former director of the British intelligence agency, MI6, told Prime Minister Tony Blair that the U.S. had already made plans to attack Iraq as early as July 2002. [includes rush transcript]
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It was marked "Secret and strictly personal - UK eyes only." That was the header of the Downing Street memo that exposed a meeting in July 2002 between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior national security team. The text to the minutes of the secret briefing was published by the Sunday Times of London last month.
In the briefing Richard Dearlove, then-director of the British intelligence agency, MI 6 - told Blair that the U.S. had already made plans to attack Iraq. According to the leaked minutes, Dearlove said the US attack would be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD." He went on to say "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Though the revelation of the so-called Downing Street memo initially saw very little attention from the mainstream U.S media, calls for a full investigation, have gained momentum. 89 House members have called on President Bush to answer questions surrounding the memo; Representative John Conyers is in the process of collecting 100,000 signatures demanding that the president address the accuracy of the document.
And Last week, former presidential candidate Senator John Kerry told the Massachusetts Standard Times newspaper that he will be raising the issue of the memo when he returns to Washington this week. He went on to say, "I think it's a stunning unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth and a profoundly important document that raises stunning issues here at home. And it's amazing to me the way it escaped major media discussion. It's not being missed on the Internet, I can tell you that."
Since the Downing Street memo revelations, more evidence has come out showing that the U.S and the Royal Air force increased their air strikes on Iraq in the months preceding the invasion in order to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war.
Of course Bush is a war criminal, we all know that. Will he ever answer for his crimes? Not likely. Notice how none of this seems to make it into the news we get every day.
yes, it doesn't make it into the news, nor does it cause even a ripple in congress. All the prewar agonizing was for show. It's pretty much all for show at this point.
full text of Downing Street memo:
http://www.tomjoad.org/downingstreetmemo.htm (http://www.tomjoad.org/downingstreetmemo.htm)
spread the word!!!!
Interview with Rep. Conyers, about Memogate and the impeach Bush movement:
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/06/int05023.html (http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/06/int05023.html)
Thanks for the link, den. I hope this issue gets some traction. There are verified and documented impeachable offenses in the public domain now. Hopefully the internet will take up the slack of the, er, ah, unbiased mainstream press. haha
lw
Blair and Bush charged in Intl. Criminal Court, more Conyers info...
http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopi ... 861#158861 (http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?p=158861#158861)
Here is an interesting development of the day from one of the provided links above.....
http://www.washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com)
Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan
Advisers to Blair Predicted Instability
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 12, 2005; A01
A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.
The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.
In its introduction, the memo "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" notes that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but adds that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it."
The July 21 memo was produced by Blair's staff in preparation for a meeting with his national security team two days later that has become controversial on both sides of the Atlantic since last month's disclosure of official notes summarizing the session.
In those meeting minutes -- which have come to be known as the Downing Street Memo -- British officials who had just returned from Washington said Bush and his aides believed war was inevitable and were determined to use intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and his relations with terrorists to justify invasion of Iraq.
The "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," said the memo -- an assertion attributed to the then-chief of British intelligence, and denied by U.S. officials and by Blair at a news conference with Bush last week in Washington. Democrats in Congress led by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), however, have scheduled an unofficial hearing on the matter for Thursday.
Now, disclosure of the memo written in advance of that meeting -- and other British documents recently made public -- show that Blair's aides were not just concerned about Washington's justifications for invasion but also believed the Bush team lacked understanding of what could happen in the aftermath.
In a section titled "Benefits/Risks," the July 21 memo states, "Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."
Saying that "we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective," the memo's authors point out, "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." The authors add, "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."
That memo and other internal British government documents were originally obtained by Michael Smith, who writes for the London Sunday Times. Excerpts were made available to The Washington Post, and the material was confirmed as authentic by British sources who sought anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter.
The Bush administration's failure to plan adequately for the postwar period has been well documented. The Pentagon, for example, ignored extensive State Department studies of how to achieve stability after an invasion, administer a postwar government and rebuild the country. And administration officials have acknowledged the mistake of dismantling the Iraqi army and canceling pensions to its veteran officers -- which many say hindered security, enhanced anti-U.S. feeling and aided what would later become a violent insurgency.
Testimony by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of Iraq policy, before a House subcommittee on Feb. 28, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, illustrated the optimistic view the administration had of postwar Iraq. He said containment of Hussein the previous 12 years had cost "slightly over $30 billion," adding, "I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years." As of May, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Congress has approved $208 billion for the war in Iraq since 2003.
The British, however, had begun focusing on doubts about a postwar Iraq in early 2002, according to internal memos.
A March 14 memo to Blair from David Manning, then the prime minister's foreign policy adviser and now British ambassador in Washington, reported on talks with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Among the "big questions" coming out of his sessions, Manning reported, was that the president "has yet to find the answers . . . [and] what happens on the morning after."
About 10 days later, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote a memo to prepare Blair for a meeting in Crawford, Tex., on April 8. Straw said "the big question" about military action against Hussein was, "how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better," as "Iraq has no history of democracy."
Straw said the U.S. assessments "assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq's WMD [weapons of mass destruction] threat. But none has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured. . . ."
Later in the summer, the postwar doubts would be raised again, at the July 23 meeting memorialized in the Downing Street Memo. Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, the British intelligence service, reported on his meetings with senior Bush officials. At one point, Dearlove said, "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman, appearing June 5 on "Meet the Press," disagreed with Dearlove's remark. "I think that there was clearly planning that occurred."
The Blair government, unlike its U.S. counterparts, always doubted that coalition troops would be uniformly welcomed, and sought U.N. participation in the invasion in part to set the stage for an international occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, said British officials interviewed recently. London was aware that the State Department had studied how to deal with an invasion's aftermath. But the British government was "shocked," in the words of one official, "when we discovered that in the postwar period the Defense Department would still be running the show."
The Downing Street Memo has been the subject of debate since the London Sunday Times first published it May 1. Opponents of the war say it proved the Bush administration was determined to invade months before the president said he made that decision.
Neither Bush nor Blair has publicly challenged the authenticity of the July 23 memo, nor has Dearlove spoken publicly about it. One British diplomat said there are different interpretations.
Last week, it was the subject of questions posed to Blair and Bush during the former's visit to Washington.
Asked about Dearlove being quoted as saying that in the United States, intelligence was being "fixed around the policy" of removing Hussein by military action, Blair said, "No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all." He then went on to discuss the British plan, outlined in the memo, to go to the United Nations to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq.
Bush said he had read "characterizations of the memo," pointing out that it was released in the middle of Blair's reelection campaign, and that the United States and Britain went to the United Nations to exhaust diplomatic options before the invasion.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Twin Towers = Reichstag
I wonder a "colonialism phase" is part of the natural character evolution of nations, perhaps our adolescence?
http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/cou ... ieval.html (http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/germany/lectures/02medieval.html)
Sure, go ahead and tell me that gestalt-like character traits emerging from mass individual activity on the scale of nations doesn't smack of animism.
I guess the only difference between now and then is the degree to which we are aware of and control our participation in those traits which tend to worsen the situation (explicit repression, physical and psychological abuse). Not only on a national level, but on a personal level, those traits being the basic building blocks of these giant psychic entities. Think of it as your civic duty to not be a jackass.
quote mok: Think of it as your civic duty to not be a jackass.
Right on, man.
But how about amending the above to mo-rons and jackasses?
He asked me for mercy
I gave him a gun
once in awhile these things
just have to be done... - Weir/Barlow? -
lw
According to a l-i-t-t-l-e article tucked away in the local daily this morn, unofficial hearings held yesterday, (after those in charge refused to hold official hearings on the subject) and decided there was sufficient evidence to proceed with an investigation.
I wonder who is going to blink first?
Btw, they are apparently hammering Frist as of late for his inaccurate ranting and raving concerning the proof of vegetative state before they pulled the plug on T Scavvo. He claims the accusations are without basis, even though he's recorded on official transcripts as apparently giving a professional opinion after only viewing a tape of the patient. He said it was obvious that she responded to visual stimulation as well as crediting her with controlling other functions. But autopsie showed that T S was blind and her brain was shrivled down to about half the mass of a normal human brain....
lw
"On Thursday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the allegation in the Downing Street Memo. He said the Democrats were 'simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed. And our focus is not on the past. It's on the future and working to make sure we succeed in Iraq.'"
Those democrats - always trying to bring up old shit.
These memos are really nothing new. It's already been shown that there was no credible evidence of WMD stockpiles, no credible evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program, no credible evidence of any Al Quieda connections or 9/11 connections. It's been shown that the very same intelligence agencies providing inforamation to the administration had cautioned that the big ticket items like mobile biological weapons labs and nuke programs were coming from forged documents (oh yeah, Condi just forgot about those and forgot to mention them to Bush in the month or two leading upto the war ... I mean, there were so many other pressing issues that the whitehouse was focused on like tax reform). Not to mention that it has been painfully obvious that the notion that 'troops would be greeted as liberators in a war that will pay for itself' plan was not a good post war plan.
It was also painfully obvious long ago that Bush planned to go to war regardless of what he said. Think about it just a bit. Once Iraq capitulated with the UN Security Counsel demands and let inspectors back in and allowed them to inspect virtually everything but Saddam's personal residences, Bush still insisted that Iraq would be invaded unless Saddam proved there were no more WMDs. The ultimatum was no less than ordering, "proove a negative or you will be invaded." You try proving a negative, try proving you never molested a dog in your life ... also consider that your word is not trusted or accepted as truth for the purposes of this excersize.