The Downing Street Memos

Nicholas F. Benton

It's so nice to see that even the Washington Post, which had cheered so hard for the U.S. invasion of Iraq two years ago, is finally having it up to here with the Bush administration's handling of the worsening Iraq mess.

"The U.S. mission in Iraq seems to be drifting dangerously - and the president, once again, is not talking frankly to the country about the sacrifice that may be required, or where the troops and other resources for such an effort will come from," the paper's lead editorial yesterday concluded, perhaps suggesting that the president should come clean about the need to reinstate the draft to keep his geopolitical vision alive.

I love that line, "the president, once again, is not talking frankly to the country."

When, pray tell, does the Post think that started? If it had been a little more the kind of paper it was during Watergate, instead of the sycophant it has been since Bush came to power, it might have probed deeper into the administration's real motives for the invasion and whether it was being entirely truthful when it sold the public on the desperate need to root out so-called "weapons of mass destruction (WMD)."

But because it didn't, the same Post editorial yesterday was compelled to belittle the explosive leaked document from a foreign policy aide at Great Britain's Downing Street that will be the subject of a congressional hearing led by Rep. John Conyers today. The Post's poo-pooing the memo's significance says more about the Post than the memo, and won't douse the firestorm that's about to break loose.

"Did he deceive us into a war? Did he trick us into a war?," Rep. Conyers asked, rhetorically, yesterday on CNN concerning the memo's suggestion that Bush's pre-invasion briefings to the American people and the U.S. Congress were lies.

Thanks to Conyers' initiative, what has been swirling around on the Internet will now force its way onto the all the major news outlets, despite the Post preoccupation with papering over its own inept, at best, behavior at that time.

The Los Angeles Times broke the story yesterday with a lengthy treatment. John Daniszewski's article noted that in March 2002, a year before the invasion, the Bush administration officials were "already deeply engaged in seeking ways to justify an invasion, newly revealed British memos indicate."

The stunning memo was first published in the Times of London on May 1. It is dated July 23, 2002. It was top secret. At its top are the words, "Secret and Strictly Personal - UK Eyes Only," and goes on the caution, "This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents."

It cites recent talks in Washington where "there was a perceptible shift in attitude." It was reported that "military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD."

Noting that the administration "had no patience with the UN route," the report then provides the fundamentally incriminating assessment, "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Later in the report, after detailing Bush administration options for launching the invasion, the report's author states, "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 neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Six new Downing Street documents shown to the Los Angeles Times "indicate that top British officials believed that by March 2002, Washington was already leaning heavily toward toppling Hussein by military force." They indicate, according to the Times, that current U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was enthusiastic about "regime change."

In effect, all the substantial discussion in the memos dealt with shaping public opinion to support an invasion, and all turn around the notion that the intelligence was being fixed to conform with policy. Talk about lying to the American people! Didn't we impeach a president a short while ago for allegedly lying, and that was about a tryst, not the human carnage that we're seeing in Iraq.

Sorry, dear friends at the Post. Your latter day impatience with Bush is noted, but your attempt to downplay the significance of these memos only tells on yourself. Be ashamed. Be very ashamed.