The Downing Street Memo has Arrived in the States

Way back on May 2nd I wrote about the role the Iraq War was playing in British elections. Of particular interest was a document now referred to as the Downing Street Memo (or DSM). This memo contained minutes from a private meeting Blair held with his staff after a July 2002 meeting with the Bush administration. The juicy part of the memo reads in part:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. 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.

C reportedly refers to Sir Richard Dearlove, cheif of MI6. Now, the interesting part is the line that states "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". Many in Britain seized upon this line as proof that Blair knowlingly lied to the British public about the rationale for the war, as well as the integrity of the intelligence that supported action. I haven't seen exit polls yet, but Blair's Labour party lost a significant part of their majority in those elections (although they maintained their absolute majority over the Torries) and many (including Blair) attributed it to the Iraq issue).

Slowly but surely this memo made its way over to the American media--although it certainly took a while (as bloggers had been talking about it about a month or so before the MSM began discussing it seriously). Rodger Payne has a good post over at the Duck discussing the the reactions of both Bush and Blair to the memo at a joint press conference on June 7th. Both dismissed the conclusion that the memo proved the administration was committed to removing Saddam by force prior to any real debate on the issue.

Now another memo has surfaced. Yesterday morning the Washington Post ran a front page story which discussed a briefing memo prepared for Tony Blair which stated that the US had not prepared properly for what the British believed would be a protracted war.

Saying that "we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective," the memo's authors point out, "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." The authors add, "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

Now, to be fair, this memo was written in July of 2002--almost a full year before the war. It is possible that more attention was given to post-invasion activities before the war began, although I doubt it given what we have learned about the confidence Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz seemed to have about US troops being "welcomed as liberators". There certainly seemed to be a missesimation of just how large of a security vaccuum would emerge in Iraq--one which would be filled by indiginous and outside resistence forces.

In any event, it seems the media and government (following the blogosphere) have grabbed onto these memos with both hands now and they are not likely to go away anytime soon (I believe the House has scheduled hearings for Thursday...). Whether or not they represent a "smoking gun" in terms of proof that the administration misrepresented its reasons for war is besides the point now--either way, perception is reality and this is going to be in the news cycle for a while.

My take on the Iraq War has remained the same since before it started. There was never a single reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. Rather, there were a number of reasons. Iraq fit into a larger strategy for combating terrorism and remaking the Middle East. You can read those musings here or here. So I am not as indignant as many are after reading these memos--either because I already knew that this was the case, or that I am interpreting them less drastically than others (make no mistake, there is room for interpretation with these memos, they are not as self-evident as they might appear). For more on these memos from around the web, see here, here, here, and here.

Filed as:Downing Street Memo, Iraq War, United States, International Politics