Downing Street Directive

By Monica Mehta, AlterNet. Posted June 13, 2005.

A number of citizen groups and Democratic politicians are launching an initiative to investigate information contained in newly unearthed British memos on the war in Iraq, and to demand answers from President Bush. The memorandums provide further evidence that Bush's administration had no reasonable plan for achieving stability or rebuilding Iraq after the war, and build on earlier memos that state it was "fixing" intelligence information to remove Saddam Hussein months before the war started.

Representative John Conyers, along with 89 members of Congress, have openly asked the administration to address claims it cooked the books to justify the war. On Thursday, June 16, Conyers and other Democrats will hold "Memogate hearings" in Washington D.C. to listen to testimony concerning the British documents and the administration's efforts to manipulate data concerning Iraq.

The hearing "will attempt to answer the serious constitutional questions raised by these revelations," according to the umbrella group AfterDowningStreet.org, a coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups and political activist groups that will join the effort. After the hearing, Conyers and fellow Democrats will deliver a petition to the White House demanding that President Bush "directly address the evidence in the Downing St. Memo of intelligence manipulation and public deceit in the rush to invade Iraq."

The most recent documents, dated July 21, 2002, state that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but "little thought" had been given to "the aftermath and how to shape it." The U.S. had no plans for "what happens on the morning after [attacking Iraq]....A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." British officials go on to warn that "the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

The papers also reveal how the British struggled with how to provide legality to an unprovoked attack on Iraq, given that, in the words of the memo, the "U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al [Qaida] is so far frankly unconvincing."

What has come to be known as the Downing Street Memo, disclosed by the Sunday Times of London on May 1, is top British aide Matthew Rycroft's record of the minutes of a meeting of Blair's senior policy aides on July 23, 2002. In it, among other things, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that the case for war was "thin" as "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran." The memo also said that Britain and America had to "create" conditions to justify a war, and that "military action was now seen as inevitable. 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."

Monica Mehta is an associate editor at AlterNet.

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