After Downing Street

Intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. Bush had already made the decision to invade. That's what the leaked secret British intelligence document now known as the Downing Street Minutes tells us from back in time to July of 2002, before discussion of an Iraq invasion had made its way anywhere near public discussion. The decision to invade Iraq had already been made in the summer of 2002, and in order to make that decision a reality, intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of invasion.

It is interesting. The occupation of Iraq has lasted more than 800 days, and debate over the invasion has been going on for more than a thousand days. In that time, revelation after revelation has been put forth exposing the lies and manipulation used by the Bush administration to make this war happen. The first accusations of Bush administration mendacity on this issue were revealed six months before the invasion took place, in an October 8, 2002, article by Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay titled "Some Administration Officials Expressing Misgivings on Iraq."

While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq," reads the article, "a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war. These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses - including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network - have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East.

They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views," continues the article, "and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary. 'Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books,' said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews. No one who was interviewed disagreed. None of the dissenting officials, who work in a number of different agencies, would agree to speak publicly, out of fear of retribution. But many of them have long experience in the Middle East and South Asia, and all spoke in similar terms about their unease with the way US political leaders are dealing with Iraq.

Since the publication of that article, we have learned about the Project for the New American Century, about its powerful advocates in Washington - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bolton among them - and about their plans from 2000 that centered around an invasion and occupation of Iraq, based upon whatever pretext was available, to establish a permanent military presence in the Mideast and to gain ultimate control of petroleum management in the region.

We have learned about the secretive Office of Special Plans and its deliberate manipulation of Iraq weapons intelligence, about deliberate pressure put on analysts in the CIA by powerful men like Dick Cheney to manufacture reports of an Iraqi threat that did not match the facts, we have heard the details of this deliberate manipulation from government insiders like Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, Tom Maertens, Roger Cressey, Donald Kerrick, Greg Thielmann, Karen Kwiatkowski, Rand Beers and Joseph Wilson, whose wife's CIA career was shattered by the White House through the very breed of retribution those anonymous sources from the October 2002 article were worried about.