Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans (Downing Street Memo Story Leading Yahoo News)

President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting

In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war.

"U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing," Ricketts says in the memo. "For Iraq, `regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."

The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was determined to go to war as America's top ally, even though his government thought a pre-emptive attack may be illegal under international law.

"The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September," said a typed copy of a March 22, 2002 memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press and written to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

"But even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW (chemical or biological weapons) fronts: the programs are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up."

Details from Rice's dinner conversation also are included in one of the secret memos from 2002, which reveal British concerns about both the invasion and poor postwar planning by the Bush administration, which critics say has allowed the Iraqi insurgency to rage.

The eight memos — all labeled "secret" or "confidential" — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies said their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secret nature of the material.

The eight documents total 36 pages and range from 10-page and eight-page studies on military and legal options in Iraq, to brief memorandums from British officials and the minutes of a private meeting held by Blair and his top advisers.

Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert who teaches at Queen Mary College, University of London, said the documents confirmed what post-invasion investigations have found.

"The documents show what official inquiries in Britain already have, that the case of weapons of mass destruction was based on thin intelligence and was used to inflate the evidence to the level of mendacity," Dodge said. "In going to war with Bush, Blair defended the special relationship between the two countries, like other British leaders have. But he knew he was taking a huge political risk at home. He knew the war's legality was questionable and its unpopularity was never in doubt."

Dodge said the memos also show Blair was aware of the postwar instability that was likely among Iraq's complex mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds once Saddam was defeated.

The British documents confirm, as well, that "soon after 9/11 happened, the starting gun was fired for the invasion of Iraq," Dodge said.

North Korea "an axis of evil." U.S. newspapers began reporting soon afterward that a U.S.-led war with Iraq was possible.

On Oct. 16, the U.S. Congress voted to authorize Bush to go to war against Iraq. On Feb. 5, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the Bush administration's case about Iraq's weapons to the U.N. Security Council. On March 19-20, the U.S.-led invasion began.

Bush and Blair both have been criticized at home since their WMD claims about Iraq proved false. But both have been re-elected, defending the conflict for removing a brutal dictator and promoting democracy in Iraq. Both administrations have dismissed the memos as old news.

Details of the memos appeared in papers early last month but the news in Britain quickly turned to the election that returned Blair to power. In the United States, however, details of the memos' contents reignited a firestorm, especially among Democratic critics of Bush.

It was in a March 14, 2002, memo that Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning, told the prime minister about the dinner he had just had with Rice in Washington.

"We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq," wrote Manning, who's now British ambassador to the United States. Rice is now Bush's secretary of state.

"It is clear that Bush is grateful for your (Blair's) support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option."

Manning said, "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed." But he also said there were signs of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks.

Blair was to meet with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on April 8, and Manning told his boss: "No doubt we need to keep a sense of perspective. But my talks with Condi convinced me that Bush wants to hear your views on Iraq before taking decisions. He also wants your support. He is still smarting from the comments by other European leaders on his Iraq policy."

A July 21 briefing paper given to officials preparing for a July 23 meeting with Blair says officials must "ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."

"In particular we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective... A postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point."

The British worried that, "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden. Further work is required to define more precisely the means by which the desired end state would be created, in particular what form of government might replace Saddam Hussein's regime and the time scale within which it would be possible to identify a successor."

In the March 22 memo from Foreign Office political director Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Straw, Ricketts outlined how to win public and parliamentary support for a war in Britain: "We have to be convincing that: the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for; it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran)."

Blair's government has been criticized for releasing an intelligence dossier on Iraq before the war that warned Saddam could launch chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice.

On March 25 Straw wrote a memo to Blair, saying he would have a tough time convincing the governing Labour Party that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was legal under international law.

"If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the U.S. would now be considering military action against Iraq," Straw wrote. "In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with OBL (Osama bin Laden) and al-Qaida."

He also questioned stability in a post-Saddam Iraq: "We have also to answer the big question — what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything."

If there not original memos verified by the writer of the memo then they are forgeries as far as I'm concerned.

They have ZERO credibility and now I understand why the MSM hasn't really run with this.

Its all phoney made up BS.

It looks to me as though moveon.org has a new business model, that is, pimping forged,leaked documents to MSM news outlets. These so called memos are too good to be true in a deja vue way. By that I mean they seem to have been drafted to "fix the post war critique. The dinner conversation between Rice and the ambassador is rich. Give me a break. Neither one would discus confidential matters at dinner.

Those sorry black congressional caucus members and Ariana Huffington dreaming of impeaching Bush. In order to do that Congress woud have to say that they did not do their own due dillgence, and that's not going to happen. Dream on.

Yeah its moveon and the other Soros funded cabals. Isn't it convenient how the leftwing media comes out with some misleading or completely fabricated story over the weekend, so the democrats can have their "talking points" for monday.

Last week it was the alleged "torture" of murdering terrorists, now it looks like this week it will be "Downing Street Memos". It really doesn't matter to the media they are spreading lies and hurting our country.

That is sad, scary and infuriating, But as you say now with alternate media to expose their lies it eventually blows back on them.

I just get madder and madder that they won't show us what is going on in Iraq and keep feeding us this made up stuff, instead. I saw that a woman got the first silver cross given since Vietnam, and I want to see her face and learn the story. I wanted to see he faces of the heoes who rescued that hostage and know the whole story, but no way. It's nothing from Aruba all night, instead.

I couldn't agree more. I guess since I'm older and remember when the media wasn't our biggest enemy it might be especially worrysome to me. I do remember when the media actually acted like the USA was on the side of good.

Sometimes Fox will give you that impression, then sometimes they make me feel like its all a sham. I was in the Marine Corp from 1965 thru 1969, although I never went to Vietnam because on my MOS. I witnessed the shift in attitudes, I believe what Ion Mihai Pacepa has to say about that. He states it was a Soviet cold war strategy to undermine America throught media and college campuses.

I know I certainly believe him because only in the USA could the media get away with the outrages they do. All the other countries and political movements they side with would shut them dowm right off the bat.

I know this has already been mentioned a few times already... BUUUUUUUUUUT:

The eight memos — all labeled "secret" or "confidential" — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

You have got to be kidding me. This is what the Left has been crying about all this time? LMAO

Where was it debunked?

I called bs on this when it first came out. It read like a liberals wet dream. It never once mentioned the problematic no fly zone. There is no way that is not going to be mentioned in a "comprehensive" memo like that if it is real. Only the liberals have forgotten all the other reasons we went to war with Saddam.

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

Smells like a Bill Burkett CBS News Dan Rather moment to me. That sentence is buried in the middle of the story. Destroyed the orininals my ass. There were no originals. It's a fiction piece.

Our piece of crap Gannett local paper had this on the front page this morning.

It never once mentioned the problematic no fly zone. There is no way that is not going to be mentioned in a "comprehensive" memo like that if it is real.
That's interesting -- I've never heard anyone point that out before. I guess if they are discussing numbers of troops, they should mention how they planned to keep the civilians in the no-fly zones safe (that is what you meant, right?). By the way, one of the newer memos does mention the no fly zone, but only to point out that using them to pressure Saddam (presumably the "spikes of activity" mentioned in the first memo) was not consistent with the resolution that created them (point 9).

LOL!!!
Here is what the AP buried in the middle of the story:

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

The whole thing is just another Rathergate.

Where was it debunked?

Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans ("Downing Street Memos" likely forgeries)

The "reporter", who apparently got skittish about that his handiwork would be quickly discovered, told to the Associated Press that he typed up the memos himself on an "old-fashioned typewriter", marked them "SECRET" and "CONFIDENTIAL", and then burned the originals.

LMBO!!!
How pathetic would you have to be to believe this reporter and his "memos"?

By the end of Clintons first term the no-fly zone was left soley in the hands of the Americans and the British. There was a tremendous fear that one of our pilots would be shot down and a hostage crisis would ensue. This would put us in the position of backing down from Saddam, which was impossible after 9-11, or going to war over one or two men at a time not of our choosing. This is why Tony Blair was behind us 100%. He didn't want to risk being the British jimmy carter.

got skittish about that his handiwork would be quickly discovered, told to the Associated Press that he typed up the memos himself on an "old-fashioned typewriter", marked them "SECRET" and "CONFIDENTIAL"
Thanks for the link. After following it for a bit, I found a pdf of the typed version which I had been looking for :-) . The "secret" and "confidential" marks are merely typed at the top and bottom, not stamped (as some others have said). The writing is crooked, and there's no letterhead. If he was trying to make them look like originals, he didn't do a very good job of it.

burned the originals
That is suspicious. I would have just hidden the originals (although I might have claimed they were burned so no one would try to forcefully extract the information from me).

[The plan] was contingency based on a pilot being shot down and held hostage.
Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. You are right, the memos certainly don't describe this kind of plan, or give any indication of it. Is your reason for saying that this implies that the memos are fake because any invasion plan would be built upon this hostage-contingency plan? As in, if we have an invasion plan ready, we might as well use it?

How pathetic would you have to be to believe this reporter and his "memos"?

They want to run with this, even now that the "memos" are self-admitted fakes, fine. We need to make sure that the entire story gets out, then.

For starters, we need to make sure it's known that one of John Conyers' "star witnesses" at the sham "committee hearing" he held on Thursday to pimp these memos was ex-CIA agent Ray McGovern, who esentially stated that the US went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq at the command of Israel. And then we can let it be known that anti-Semitic and anti-Israel literature was handed out to the audience watching the "hearing" on televison - at DNC Headquarters.

It's time to stop screwing around with this perverted, sick filth. They need to pay dearly for this crap.

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. You are right, the memos certainly don't describe this kind of plan, or give any indication of it. Is your reason for saying that this implies that the memos are fake because any invasion plan would be built upon this hostage-contingency plan? As in, if we have an invasion plan ready, we might as well use it?

The point is that they didn't want to have to have a plan like this on the table anymore.

The liberal media has had a major case of amnesia over the reasons for going to war. The only reason they can remember is WMD's. The thing that tied a liberal British prime minister to a conservative president in this war is the fact that these two countries were both stuck patrolling the no-fly zone. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Any memo that goes over the reasons for the British and Americans going together in this war is going to at least breifly mention that. It's been a while since I've seen the document but I do remember when I read it, it contained all of the popularly remembered reasons for going to war, but only the ones the liberals want to remember.

The thing that really tied us to the British in the reason for going to was is the no-fly zone.

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