Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’

[Guest guest]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1650822,00.html

 

June 12, 2005

 

 

Ministers were told of need for Gulf war `excuse'

Michael Smith

 

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to

taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice

but to find a way of making it legal.

 

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam

Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush

three months earlier.

 

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair's inner

circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it

was " necessary to create the conditions " which would make it legal.

 

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should

not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using

British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any

illegal US action.

 

" US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and

Diego Garcia, " the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of

legality " would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with

regard to UK participation " .

 

The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom

were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the

foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The

full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times.

 

The document said the only way the allies could justify military

action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or

rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with

the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.

 

" It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which

Saddam would reject, " the document says. But if he accepted it and did

not attack the allies, they would be " most unlikely " to obtain the

legal justification they needed.

 

The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts

claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last

week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to

war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March 2003.

 

The briefing paper is certain to add to the pressure, particularly on

the American president, because of the damaging revelation that Bush

and Blair agreed on regime change in April 2002 and then looked for a

way to justify it.

 

There has been a growing storm of protest in America, created by last

month's publication of the minutes in The Sunday Times. A host of

citizens, including many internet bloggers, have demanded to know why

the Downing Street memo (often shortened to " the DSM " on websites) has

been largely ignored by the US mainstream media.

 

The White House has declined to respond to a letter from 89 Democratic

congressmen asking if it was true — as Dearlove told the July meeting

— that " the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy "

in Washington.

 

The Downing Street memo burst into the mainstream American media only

last week after it was raised at a joint Bush-Blair press conference,

forcing the prime minister to insist that " the facts were not fixed in

any shape or form at all " .

 

John Conyers, the Democratic congressman who drafted the letter to

Bush, has now written to Dearlove asking him to say whether or not it

was accurate that he believed the intelligence was being " fixed "

around the policy. He also asked the former MI6 chief precisely when

Bush and Blair had agreed to invade Iraq and whether it is true they

agreed to " manufacture " the UN ultimatum in order to justify the war.

 

He and other Democratic congressmen plan to hold their own inquiry

this Thursday with witnesses including Joe Wilson, the American former

ambassador who went to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was

seeking to buy uranium ore for its nuclear weapons programme.

 

Frustrated at the refusal by the White House to respond to their

letter, the congressmen have set up a website —

www.downingstreetmemo.com — to collect signatures on a petition

demanding the same answers.

 

Conyers promised to deliver it to Bush once it reached 250,000

signatures. By Friday morning it already had more than 500,000 with as

many as 1m expected to have been obtained when he delivers it to the

White House on Thursday.

 

AfterDowningStreet.org, another website set up as a result of the

memo, is calling for a congressional committee to consider whether

Bush's actions as depicted in the memo constitute grounds for impeachment.

 

It has been flooded with visits from people angry at what they see as

media self-censorship in ignoring the memo. It claims to have

attracted more than 1m hits a day.

 

Democrats.com, another website, even offered $1,000 (about £550) to

any journalist who quizzed Bush about the memo's contents, although

the Reuters reporter who asked the question last Tuesday was not aware

of the reward and has no intention of claiming it.

 

The complaints of media self-censorship have been backed up by the

ombudsmen of The Washington Post, The New York Times and National

Public Radio, who have questioned the lack of attention the minutes

have received from their organisations.