Smoking Memo?I tuned in Airhead America this afternoon during a commercial break on my regular station, and Randi Rhodes was waxing rhapsodic about a memo supposedly prepared for Tony Blair in July of 2002 that supposedly proves that the Bush Administration lied about its reasons for going to war with Iraq. Today Power Line provides a link to the London Times
transcript of the memo. I don't have time this evening to go into the whole thing but
Power Line does a good job of rebutting Juan Cole's fevered imaginings.
What gets me about the memo is that it's too good by half. Listen to this:
John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.
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.First reactions: Why the past tense? Remember this memo was created in July of 2002, before the invastion. "Real support for Saddam... was probably narrowly based". Shouldn't it be "Real support for Saddam
is probably narrowly based?" Maybe it's a style point, maybe it's one of those idiosynchracies between US grammar and British. But it's striking.
Doesn't the whole part quoted have the sound of something written well after the fact? Especially the last sentence, which sounds far too perfect. Remember at this point in the memo, the participants haven't discussed the war yet; that comes next on the agenda. But the memo writer is already noting that the Americans have no plan for after the war? I don't buy it for a second.
Of course, the lefties are seizing on the line about "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It certainly fits the lefties' talking points to a "T", but the problem as
Power Line lays out:
But we know that isn't true. The consensus estimate of the U.S. intelligence community has been made public, and it clearly says that, with a high degree of confidence, Iraq possesses chemical and biological weapons. The Senate Intelligence Committee's report has confirmed that this is what the intelligence community believed and reported to the President, and that there is no evidence that the administration improperly influenced the gathering or reporting of intelligence ("The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.")I suspect that the memo has received some degree of vetting; the London Times is not CBS News. Unfortunately, the Times has only the transcript and not a copy so it can't be verified in any other way (e.g., initials, signatures, etc.). But I'd be very surprised if this is a completely original memorandum prepared shortly after a meeting on July 23, 2002 as it is purported to be.
