About That Downing Street Memo
Every day or two we get an email from a lefty demanding to know why we haven't written about the "Downing Street memo" that John Kerry and others are treating as a bombshell revelation. Actually, we wrote about that memo (and quoted it in full) more than a month ago, just after it became public. Our analysis is here: "A Gun That Doesn't Smoke." In a word, the memo is extremely interesting, but tells us nothing new about pre-war intelligence on Iraq, and is anything but a bombshell.
DEACON adds: It looks like even lefties can get ahead of the curve if they read P*w*r L*ne. [Realitique wrote about it on May 2. P*w*r L*ne's post came four days later. -Ed.]
On 6/13/05, Rob wrote:
You claim that the DSM (and you may claim that about the newest document) is no "smoking gun." In the sense that we've heard most (not all) of what it says before, that's true. The difference between the Downing Street Memo and, say, the pre- and post-war reporting by Knight-Ridder and Seymour Hersh and others, the claims of Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill, the Niger forgeries and Joseph Wilson's story, Mickey Herskowitz's claims, and the demonstrably false claims of the administration that Saddam and Al-Qaeda were in cahoots, is that the Downing Street Memo is a high-level British government document, which Blair has yet to disavow. It is the most solid documentary evidence to date that the Bush administration mislead the American public into supporting a war that had to occur when it did only because of upcoming elections in the United States. If the DSM isn't a smoking gun, it sure has the whiff of burnt gun-powder about it.
P*w*r L*ne wrote:
Rob, it's hard to tell from your email what you're talking about. The Downing Street memo, which I assume you've read, makes clear that Blair and his advisers had no doubt that Saddam possessed WMDs, and they were very concerned about ways in which he might use them in the event of war. So what's your point?
John H.
On 6/13/05, Rob wrote:
My point was exactly what I said in my last message.
You mentioned WMD, but that's only a minor part of the memo. What's clear from the DSM and the Cabinet Office paper published yesterday, is that:
"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."
Except that, inconveniently, Saddam let the UN inspectors in. We didn't give them enough time to do their job. Why? Because we were interested in overthrowing the regime, not in assessing Saddam's WMD.
As the Cabinet Office briefing paper makes clear, the UK thought the UN weapons inspectors would have barely set up shop by the time the war would need to begin. Though they underestimated the inspectors' abilities, this merely confirms that the Bush administration used WMD as a pretext, as the administration's use of fraudulent Niger documents show. It was all rhetoric.
[P*w*r L*ne wrote:]
Now you're quoting one guy who formed an opinion about President Bush's thinking, based on a brief series of meetings in Washington. This guy was a British official, not an administration insider. By late July 2002, preparations for the war obviously had to be underway; Bush may or may not have thought that war was inevitable at that point, but what's the difference? He could have changed his mind if events had gone differently, but he didn't.
Likewise with someone's opinion that the case for war was "thin." (This view apparently is attribued to the Foreign Secretary, but this is ambiguous.) Once again: so what? It's hardly a shock that a British diplomat thought the case was "thin." Quoting his opinion doesn't advance the debate on the merits at all.
Obviously, some people were in favor of the Iraq war, and others opposed it. There are legitimate grounds to debate the wisdom of the policy. But it is silly to argue that President Bush did anything but act in what he thought was the country's interest, based on the information then available. If you disagree with him, fine. But debate the policy issues. This endless chorus of "Bush lied" just makes you and your colleagues look silly.
[John H.]
[Emphasis mine.]
UPDATE: My reply:
Yes, the man judging that the "case was thin" was, as you pointed out, the Foreign Secretary. I should've been clearer. The man who reported that "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." was the head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, who met with George Tenet. And according to the Knight-Ridder story of May 6, a former US official called Dearlove's description of that meeting with Tenet (as reported in the Downing Street meeting minutes) "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired."
I'm not sure what makes me and my "colleagues look silly." Why should I debate only policy and now the extremely dishonest way in which a policy is implemented? Should I not analyze Bush's repeated dissembling on Social Security (There's a crisis! But, I admit, my proposal won't fix it! That's why I'm on tour to promote it!)?
The President and several of his employees in the White House dissembled on a regular basis in order to whip up support for an invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003. Maybe Bush thought he was doing what was in the best interest of country--I don't know his motives--but apparently he thought he couldn't be honest about why we had to go to war (esp. when we already had weapons inspectors on the ground). But that should come as no surprise: it's the dominant pattern of his administration.
And please don't assume that I think Bush knew there was no WMD. I never said that.
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I wonder what the sky looks like in their world.
Note: John H. didn't sign
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