[lit-ideas] Downing Street Memo
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 10:23:10 -0700
More below on the Downing Street Memo in today's Sunday Times (UK). This could
lead to
impeachment or resignation.
See also today's Washington Post:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/11/AR2005061100723.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
Go to www.downingstreetmemo.com and sign Congressman Conyer's petition, asking
Bush to
explain the memo. Over 500,000 signatures so far.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
Ministers Were Told of Need for Gulf War 'Excuse'
By Michael Smith
The Sunday Times UK
Sunday 12 June 2005
"The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair's inner
circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it
was "necessary to create the conditions" which would make it legal."
Ministers were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to
taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no
choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said
Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of
Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W
Bush three months earlier.
The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair's
inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was
illegal it was "necessary to create the conditions" which would make
it legal.
This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain
should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be
using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit
in any illegal US action.
"US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in
Cyprus and Diego Garcia," the briefing paper warned. This meant that
issues of legality "would arise virtually whatever option ministers
choose with regard to UK participation".
The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among
whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the
foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The
full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday
Times.
The document said the only way the allies could justify military
action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or
rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with
the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.
"It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms
which Saddam would reject," the document says. But if he accepted it
and did not attack the allies, they would be "most unlikely" to
obtain the legal justification they needed.
The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war
contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their
Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to
avoid having to go to war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March
2003.
The briefing paper is certain to add to the pressure,
particularly on the American president, because of the damaging
revelation that Bush and Blair agreed on regime change in April 2002
and then looked for a way to justify it.
There has been a growing storm of protest in America, created by
last month's publication of the minutes in The Sunday Times. A host
of citizens, including many internet bloggers, have demanded to know
why the Downing Street memo (often shortened to "the DSM" on
websites) has been largely ignored by the US mainstream media.
The White House has declined to respond to a letter from 89
Democratic congressmen asking if it was true - as Dearlove told the
July meeting - that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy" in Washington.
The Downing Street memo burst into the mainstream American media
only last week after it was raised at a joint Bush-Blair press
conference, forcing the prime minister to insist that "the facts were
not fixed in any shape or form at all".
John Conyers, the Democratic congressman who drafted the letter
to Bush, has now written to Dearlove asking him to say whether or not
it was accurate that he believed the intelligence was being "fixed"
around the policy. He also asked the former MI6 chief precisely when
Bush and Blair had agreed to invade Iraq and whether it is true they
agreed to "manufacture" the UN ultimatum in order to justify the war.
He and other Democratic congressmen plan to hold their own
inquiry this Thursday with witnesses including Joe Wilson, the
American former ambassador who went to Niger to investigate claims
that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore for its nuclear weapons
programme.
Frustrated at the refusal by the White House to respond to their
letter, the congressmen have set up a website -
www.downingstreetmemo.com - to collect signatures on a petition
demanding the same answers.
Conyers promised to deliver it to Bush once it reached 250,000
signatures. By Friday morning it already had more than 500,000 with
as many as 1m expected to have been obtained when he delivers it to
the White House on Thursday.
AfterDowningStreet.org, another website set up as a result of
the memo, is calling for a congressional committee to consider
whether Bush's actions as depicted in the memo constitute grounds for
impeachment.
It has been flooded with visits from people angry at what they
see as media self-censorship in ignoring the memo. It claims to have
attracted more than 1m hits a day.
Democrats.com, another website, even offered $1,000 (about £550)
to any journalist who quizzed Bush about the memo's contents,
although the Reuters reporter who asked the question last Tuesday was
not aware of the reward and has no intention of claiming it.
The complaints of media self-censorship have been backed up by
the ombudsmen of The Washington Post, The New York Times and National
Public Radio, who have questioned the lack of attention the minutes
have received from their organisations.
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