The Secret Downing Street Memo

The secret Downing Street memo is available online. This memo is an account of talks between the US and UK governments in July 2002 regarding the course of action to be taken in Iraq. There are plenty of things to note in this document. (A full analysis from a UK point of view has been published by the Sunday Times.)

As of mid-summer 2002,

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. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Remember, the drama played out publicly was that the decision to attack was not made until much later. Also note the lack of discussion about planning for the war's aftermath, a momentous miscalculation for which many US and UK soldiers have paid with their lives.

Just before the war began, much was made of Turkey's decision to not allow bases there to be used in the war. It was thought this threw a wrench into war planning. But the memo says

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital.

From the beginning, it appears the Pentagon was preparing strategies that did not rely on Turkey. No one has accused the Pentagon of not preparing combat strategy well.

The most interesting paragraph is

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

It is repeated that Bush had already decided to go to war. The difficulty was in justifying it. It was understood that the case for the war, i.e. WMD, was thin. Contrary to the president's dire public warnings about the threat Hussein posed, it was understood that his capabilities were far less than advertised.

On the question of political strategy,

But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.

So the push for a UN ultimatum came from Blair. Secretary Powell got a lot of credit for pushing the administration down the path of using the UN, but the memo credits the UK. This is, of course, a UK internal memo so it will emphasize what they were doing and would not necessarily include comments about what the US Secretary of State was saying to his president.

None of this is particularly surprising. Everyone knew, or should have known, that Bush was always pushing for war and that anything else was just a charade to fool the gullible. That Bush didn't want to go through the UN and had to be pressured into it is well understood. The one enlightening element is the revelation that even Bush and Blair understood how weak the WMD argument was. This doesn't mean that Bush did not accept former CIA director Tenet's assertion that the WMD evidence was the "slam dunk" he said it was. Rather, Bush and Blair understood that they were exaggerating the threat from those non-existent weapons in order to get support.