Bush and Blair pre-Iraq invasion shenanigans revealed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/21/iraq-inquiry-tony-blair-bush

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be "brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president".

The five-page document, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, and copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, and the UK's ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines how Bush told Blair he had decided on a start date for the war.

Paraphrasing Bush's comments at the meeting, Manning, noted: "The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin."

Last night an expert on international law who is familar with the memo's contents said it provided vital evidence into the two men's frames of mind as they considered the invasion and its aftermath and must be presented to the Chilcott inquiry established by Gordon Brown to examine the causes, conduct and consequences of the Iraq war.

Philippe Sands, QC, a professor of law at University College London who is expected to give evidence to the inquiry, said confidential material such as the memo was of national importance, making it vital that the inquiry is not held in private, as Brown originally envisioned.

In today's Observer, Sands writes: "Documents like this raise issues of national embarrassment, not national security. The restoration of public confidence requires this new inquiry to be transparent. Contentious matters should not be kept out of the public domain, even in the run-up to an election."

The memo notes there had been a shift in the two men's thinking on Iraq by late January 2003 and that preparing for war was now their priority. "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," Manning writes. This was despite the fact Blair that had yet to receive advice on the legality of the war from the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, which did not arrive until 7 March 2003 - 13 days before the bombing campaign started.

In his article today, Sands says the memo raises questions about the selection of the chair of the inquiry. Sir John Chilcott sat on the 2004 Butler inquiry, which examined the reliability of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, and would have been privy to the document's contents - and the doubts about WMD running to the highest levels of the US and UK governments.

Many senior legal experts have expressed dismay that Chilcott has been selected to chair the inquiry as he is considered to be close to the security services after his time spent as a civil servant in Northern Ireland.

Brown had believed that allowing the Chilcott inquiry to hold private hearings would allow witnesses to be candid. But after bereaved families and antiwar campaigners expressed outrage, the prime minister wrote to Chilcott to say that if the panel can show witnesses and national security issues will not be compromised by public hearings, he will change his stance.

Lord Guthrie, a former chief of the defence staff under Blair, described the memo as "quite shocking". He said that it underscored why the Chilcott inquiry must be seen to be a robust investigation: "It's important that the inquiry is not a whitewash as these inquiries often are."

This year, the Dutch government launched its own inquiry into its support for the war. Significantly, the inquiry will see all the intelligence shared with the Dutch intelligence services by MI5 and MI6. The inquiry intends to publish its report in November - suggesting that confidential information about the role played by the UK and the US could become public before Chilcott's inquiry reports next year.

We weren't lied to! Bush did nothing wrong!

Wow. It's sickening how corrupt our government is. Trying to lure a country into war shouldn't happen in a civilized society. This further proves that the only logical reason for war was Bush's reelection campaign since "you can't change leaders in the middle of a war" was one of their slogans.

Umm.... yeah.

What a shocker.

That the government was preparing to go to war MONTHS before they actually did.

I always thought they only planned that shit a day or two in advance. And now, thanks to this report, I have learned they actually plan that shit way in advance. Who would have thought?

That's not the 'shocking' part, idiot. It's that it "confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors
would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action."

In other words, they weren't really preparing troops for war - they were looking to fabricate ways to legitimize the war they already planned for.

LOL.

Surely you understand that they believed Iraq was HIDING the weapons, right?

Let us review:

a. We sold them weapons of mass destruction
b. They USED the weapons against their own people

You still follow? In other words, there is- at this point in our trip through history- NO question that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. WE had the reciepts.

c. We asked them to disarm, and verify that they are disarmed
d. They refused to verify disarmament and took an aggressive posture against the USA and the world, including attempts at shooting down our planes
e. Disarmament is not an academic and philosophical impossibility, like internet warriors like to claim (i.e., it is impossible to prove a negative, etc.). Rather, it is a proven, documented, and highly developed process that has already been successfully implemented in places like Libya. Iraq did not conform to international pressure to verify its systematic and detailed destruction of highly dangerous weapons which we knew they had, and which we knew they had the will and track record to use.


What was your question again?

Jesus you are a thick bastard.

"they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action"

In other words, even if they KNEW WMD's would be in Iraq - indeed they had the 'receipts' (although I'm not sure those WMD's would still be very viable at that point), they also came to believe that the inspectors weren't going to find any. Though Bush already had this mind made up on the invasion (it had already been planned for), he still wanted to provide more sufficient evidence to legitimize the invasion. What this entire article is about is HOW they planned on getting that additional 'evidence' - including "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover" in hopes that Iraqi's would shoot at it.

Trust me, I'm not arguing over whether or not Iraq had WMD's or ever used them - just pointing out that this is not a story about 'omg! people plan for war months before going to war!' as you've clearly been implying. You were just being a jackass and wanted to post a pic of some guy yawning.

Point being if they have to come up with things to prove good reasoning, then perhaps they need to rethink the position all together. They pretty much said they were guilty until proven innocent...even if that means going into a neverending war.

lizzy8203 wrote:Point being if they have to come up with things to prove good reasoning, then perhaps they need to rethink the position all together. They pretty much said they were guilty until proven innocent...even if that means going into a neverending war.

I would normally agree with you, Lizzy.

But you, like others, are not taking something into consideration: In the time that Bush and Cheney made the decisions to go to war, we were in a post 9/11 world.

This was a world where the USA (the WHOLE USA) was frustrated with the U.N. (just as we are currently) for thier lack of action, and the only response they had towards Iraq was one resolution after another.

This was a world where the U.N. was less of a target for Al-Qaeda. Therefore why WOULD they ever agree to fight against Iraq? The view was that they would keep doing what they had always done: pass more resolutions and allow the THREAT to continue unresolved. The US wanted it resolved. The UN didn't give a fuck, and Iraq refused to prove that it was not a threat.

This was a world where the danger of waking up to a mushroom cloud was a very real possibility (and it still is a possibility from the rest of the "Axis of Evil").

In those situations, you have to take whatever steps necessary to eliminate the threat.



This is like shooting the kid with the toy gun. You warned him to drop it, but in the end if he doesn't listen he goes down, because you are not sure if it is real or not. The only way to find out if it is real is to either kill him, or take a risk that he is going to kill you. So what do you do? You do what WE did with Iraq: you WARN the kid, over and over and over again. Around you, there is a big crowd, saying "don't kill him!", and "drop the gun kid!". The danger keeps increasing, and you tell the kid if he doesn't drop it, he is going to die. But he doesn't listen. Finally, you can't wait any longer; you have to make a choice. You choose the best possible scenario and you sacrifice the kid, in exchange for your own safety and the safety of everyone else around. The kid drops to the ground dead with a hole in his head.


And once he does, all the armchair quarterbacks come out of the woodwork and start criticizing the decisions.

And if you want to make the analogy perfectly clear and accurate, by the way, the kid that went down was a mass murderer, and convicted rapist and among his crimes are the gassing of infants in Kurdish villages.

Good analagy JB...does help make the picture a little more visible..but the thought of them being able to do this only makes me wonder more about how much has perhaps been manipulated in the past. And yes perhaps they were a threat to us...perhaps...but we use to be such a strong nation...now we are a joke to many...and incredibly in debt. I know not all of our economical problems come down to the war...but you have to admit we have paid a lot of money to accomplish relatively little...and what has been accomplished would be deminished in months if we were to return their country back to them. I just remember the 12 billion dollar a month figure...Im sure its increased...but at that rate alone, and the number of years we have been at war, really adds up. We can debate as much as we would like, but I would like to really know what is going on in the minds of our leaders sometimes.