More Downing Street Memos

More secret memos from inside the British government are providing even more insight into the inner workings of the US efforts to go to war in Iraq. As with previous memos, they merely confirm what many already knew and what all should have known: that despite public proclamations to the contrary, the Bush administration was looking for justification to attack Iraq long before the war actually began. As early as March 2002, one full year before the invasion, then National Security Advisor Condi Rice was enthusiastic about regime change in Iraq.

One thing I find interesting is the role of the British. Throughout these memos, the Blair government expresses considerable doubt about many elements of the Bush administration's analysis and planning. Just some examples:

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

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.

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.

So the British doubted the regime change argument, they doubted the WMD argument, and they pointed out the absence of any kind of planning for a post-war occupation, an omission which could (and did) lead to a raging insurgency. With all of these doubts, none of which were ever resolved, the British still ran off to war behind Bush.

I've quoted (perhaps not exactly right) this from Star Wars before: who is the greater fool, the fool or the fool who follows him? I have long admired Tony Blair. I followed British news via Sky News when I lived in Europe and so got to know his government a little bit. But these memos indict the Blair government as much as the Bush administration.