The Real News in the Downing Street
Memos
LA Times
By Michael Smith,
Michael Smith writes on defense issues for the Sunday Times of London
Smith broke the Downing Street Memos
June 23, 2005
It is now nine months since I obtained the first of the "Downing Street
memos," thrust into my hand by someone who asked me to meet him in a quiet
watering hole in London for what I imagined would just be a friendly drink.
At the time, I was defense correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, and
a staunch supporter of the decision to oust Saddam Hussein. The source was a
friend. He'd given me a few stories before but nothing nearly as interesting as
this.
The six leaked documents I took away with me that night were to change
completely my opinion of the decision to go to war and the honesty of Prime
Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.
They focused on the period leading up to the Crawford, Texas, summit between
Blair and Bush in early April 2002, and were most striking for the way in which
British officials warned the prime minister, with remarkable prescience, what a
mess post-war Iraq would become. Even by the cynical standards of realpolitik,
the decision to overrule this expert advice seemed to be criminal.
The second batch of leaks arrived in the middle of this year's British
general election, by which time I was writing for a different newspaper, the
Sunday Times. These documents, which came from a different source, related to a
crucial meeting of Blair's war Cabinet on July 23, 2002. The timing of the leak
was significant, with Blair clearly in electoral difficulties because of an
unpopular war.
I did not then regard the now-infamous memo — the one that includes
the minutes of the July 23 meeting — as the most important. My main
article focused on the separate briefing paper for those taking part, prepared
beforehand by Cabinet Office experts.
It said that Blair agreed at Crawford that "the UK would support military
action to bring about regime change." Because this was illegal, the officials
noted, it was "necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally
support military action."
But Downing Street had a "clever" plan that it hoped would trap Hussein into
giving the allies the excuse they needed to go to war. It would persuade the
U.N. Security Council to give the Iraqi leader an ultimatum to let in the
weapons inspectors.
Although Blair and Bush still insist the decision to go to the U.N. was
about averting war, one memo states that it was, in fact, about "wrong-footing"
Hussein into giving them a legal justification for war.
British officials hoped the ultimatum could be framed in words that would be
so unacceptable to Hussein that he would reject it outright. But they were far
from certain this would work, so there was also a Plan B.
American media coverage of the Downing Street memo has largely focused on
the assertion by Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British foreign intelligence,
that war was seen as inevitable in Washington, where "the intelligence and
facts were being fixed around the policy."
But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It quotes British
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that "the U.S. had already begun 'spikes
of activity' to put pressure on the regime." This we now realize was Plan
B.
Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping
a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies
an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first
stage of the conflict.
British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq
in 2002 show that although virtually none were used in March and April, an
average of 10 tons a month were dropped between May and August.
But these initial "spikes of activity" didn't have the desired effect. The
Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the excuse Bush and Blair needed.
So at the end of August, the allies dramatically intensified the bombing into
what was effectively the initial air war.
The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied aircraft shot up to
54.6 tons in September alone, with the increased rates continuing into
2003.
In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as
everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress
approved military action against Iraq.
The way in which the intelligence was "fixed" to justify war is old
news.
The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of
the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the
backing of Congress.
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