Down the block from Downing Street

Hopefully by now you've heard about the Downing Street memo (or have you?). Well, another memo now surfaces, producing some additional should-be-damaging news for Bush to dodge (via The Sunday Times):

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”.

So by April, 2002, Tony Blair had already agreed to the U.S. plan of attacking Iraq. In turn, this means there was in fact a plan in place prior to April, 2002. But wait a moment, I thought there was nothing farther from the truth than allegations that the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq months prior to publicly declaring so! Has somebody been lying to us?

Well maybe this is all simply a hoax. Who were allegedly copied in on this stunning news?

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.

Those are some big names. We can probably assume then, that this isn't an instance of some U.S. Democrat with a chip on his shoulder creating an official-looking document in Word and distributing it on the internet.

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.

I guess it wasn't that difficult after all.

What does this briefing paper now mean for Bush & Blair? Will the U.S. media even cover this issue or will the Jackson trial and stormy weather and runaway brides continue to dominate U.S. attention? This is where I am skeptical:

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.

I won't hold my breath. Bush, the man, and his administration, have been besieged by damaging revelations, one after the other, for nearly his entire presidency, but he has always spun his way out of controversy relatively unscathed (Bush is at an all-time low in popularity, but what does it matter at this point - he's already been re-elected). Still, Michael Smith of the Sunday Times seems to believe in the power of the story:

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.

OK, maybe there is some hope, after all, that facts and truth will eventually prevail. Still, while I believe that even some traditionally ardent Bush supporters will finally begin to question the honesty of their beloved leader, most people are already (or will quickly become) weary of the repeated allegations that Bush lied to them. Besides, this all assumes, of course, that the U.S. media will actually give these damaging revelations the attention they deserve.

In addition, as a last resort Bush can always simply play the "well we did what we thought was right" card, or if he doesn't even want to give us that much he can play his favourite "the world is a safer place with Saddam behind bars" card.

He may or may not be playing with a full deck, but George W. Bush always seems to have a good enough hand to keep himself in the game.