After Downing Street

[Guest guest]

" t r u t h o u t " <messenger

FOCUS: William Rivers Pitt | After Downing Street

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 11:34:49 -0700

 

 

 

FOCUS: William Rivers Pitt | After Downing Street

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/060905X.shtml

 

 

VIDEO SPECIAL: William Rivers Pitt | Stand with Us

http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

 

 

 

 

After Downing Street

By William Rivers Pitt

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Thursday 09 June 2005

 

As to US assertions that Iraq possessed bombs, rockets and shells

for poison agents, unmanned aerial vehicles for delivering biological

and chemical weapons, nuclear weapon materials, sarin, tabun, mustard

agent, precursor chemicals, VX nerve agent, anthrax, aflotoxins, ricin

and surface-to-surface Al Hussein missiles, not one has so far been

found. One vial of Strain B Botulinum toxin is found in the domestic

refrigerator of an Iraqi scientist. It is ten years old. Hans Blix

comments, " They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were

weapons. Like the former days of the witch hunt, they are convinced

that they exist. And if you see a black cat, well, that's evidence of

the witch. "

 

-- From David Hale's new play, Stuff Happens

 

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.

 

We have watched our government use the attacks of September 11 to

terrorize the American people into supporting the invasion of Iraq, we

wrapped ourselves in plastic sheeting and duct tape while handling our

mail with oven mitts so as not to be infected with the anthrax we were

told was in the hands of Saddam Hussein, we were told that they knew

the weapons were there, that they knew where the weapons were, we were

told by Bush himself his January 2003 State of the Union address that

the 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, one

million pounds of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions

to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs and uranium from

Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program were waiting in Iraq

to be given to terrorists for use against us, and that this was the

main reason, the central reason, the absolute fact which required

immediate action.

 

We have seen all this and more, we have seen torture, we have seen

murder, we have seen the grinding of a civilian population in Iraq

that was no threat to us or anyone else, we have seen hundreds of

billions of dollars funneled into the bank accounts of administration

cronies under the camouflage of this " War on Terror, " we have seen one

thousand six hundred and eighty-four American soldiers die and be

returned home in transfer tubes, we have seen ten times that number

wounded grievously, and we have seen more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians

killed in their homes and on their streets, the uncounted dead whose

innocent blood stains us all.

 

And now, after all that, it comes down to these Downing Street

Minutes, to this small document released at the beginning of May by a

British official looking to throw sand in Tony Blair's election hopes.

After a roomful of Deep Throats and a dozen different kinds of

Pentagon Papers were exposed before withering on the media vine, the

Minutes now stand as irrefutable proof that the road to war in Iraq

was paved, with absolute intent, with lies and deceit and misdirection

and fraud.

 

For a time, it seemed as though these Minutes would join the rest

of the Iraq revelations, discarded in the media gutter, run off the

road by earth-shattering stories about Michael Jackson and Paris

Hilton and Robert Blake and Martha Stewart and American Idol. Lately,

and with a concerted push by activists and a number of members of the

House of Representatives, the Downing Street Minutes are beginning to

garner deserved and focused attention.

 

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post wrote on June 8th that " After

six weeks in the political wilderness, the Downing Street Memo

yesterday finally burst into the White House - and into the

headlines. " USA Today reported on the same day that, " A simmering

controversy over whether American media have ignored a secret British

memo about how President Bush built his case for war with Iraq bubbled

over into the White House on Tuesday. "

 

Descriptions and condemnations of the Minutes have begun appearing

in most of the major newspapers, and the document has become

contentious fodder for debate on the cable and network news stations.

White House apologists are out in force, and the spinners are

spinning, but the simple facts of the matter dwarf the flaccid excuses

and explanations petering out of the administration.

 

The Minutes were thrown into the faces of Bush and Blair during a

joint press conference on June 7th. The two leaders were asked, " On

Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says

intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing

Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what

happened? Could both of you respond? "

 

Bush replied, " Well, I - you know, I read kind of the

characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out

in the middle of his race. I'm not sure who 'they dropped it out' is,

but - I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there. And

somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use

military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the

truth. " The rest of his answer was a lame rehash of the old lies, that

the decision wasn't made before the facts were in, that the facts

weren't manipulated, that war was the last option. Bush was visibly

angered by the question, and not long after, brought the press

conference to an abrupt end.

 

The record is clear, the evidence piled before us, treachery after

stacked treachery. Plenty of powerful people would like this document

to go away, not excepting the folks in the news media, because the

document provides a capstone exposure of just how flawed, biased,

shabby and ultimately deadly their coverage of this issue has been.

Don't doubt for a second that the scions of our journalistic realm

would like the Minutes to fade, because as long as the document stands

in the light, their complicity in this catastrophe is all too clear.

 

It isn't going away. A massive coalition of activist groups have

come together to form the After Downing Street Coalition, which seeks

coverage of this issue in the media and accountability on this issue

from Congress and the administration. Rep. John Conyers and 88 other

House members have delivered a letter to Bush demanding answers, and

nearly 200,000 Americans have signed their support for this letter.

The number of signatures grows by the day.

 

This moment is described as the tipping point. Large majorities of

Americans, in every poll, believe the Iraq invasion was unnecessary

and the casualties thus far inflicted to be unacceptable. For the

first time, the poll numbers show that a clear majority of the

American people no longer believe that George W. Bush is keeping them

safe. Bi-partisan coalitions are forming in Congress to demand that

the US withdraw from Iraq and give that nation back to the people who

live there, and those coalitions are edging towards majority-sized

numbers. Legislation has been presented demanding withdrawal, and more

is in the offing.

 

And now, the Minutes. Tomorrow, the Minutes. Every day, the

Minutes, until there is a reckoning.

 

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally

bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't

Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

 

-------