New Memos Detail Early Plans for Invading Iraq

[Larry]

Originally posted by ironmic

i have the jamison memo that says we are invading BANG****

That's J. Jonah Jamison?

[tex]

Originally posted by SkinsHokieFan

Whats that saying "hope for the best prepare for the worst"

I am almost certain right now we also have invasion plans for Iran, North Korea and Saudia Arabia

I do think though (from my observations) it was pretty clear we were going to invade in early 2002. My only beef was letting the world know every little detail about the battle plan and allowing Saddam a full year to prepare

And I think this line is very important

"What has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September," Ricketts wrote. "Attempts to claim otherwise publicly will increase skepticism about our case

And I think the admin failed to make that very clear, with exception to Rumsfeld's looking at "Iraq through the 9/11 prism" comment

You can bet there are on-the-shelf plans for every military contingency that can be imagined.

The administration’s “fact-fixing” and the early continuous movement of tons of equipment, arms, and supplies into theater no doubt illustrates that a preconceived military operation was being executed behind the scenes. Somebody in Washington knew we were going to war long before the rest of us.

[Larry]

Originally posted by tex

Somebody in Washington knew we were going to war long before the rest of us.

Speak for yourself.

I knew we were invading Iraq before 9/11.

So did Dick Cheney.

[chomerics]

Originally posted by Brown 43

Answer this question? Did Bush really need to cook the books to invaid Iraq.

Answer is: No

The answer is YES!!! Read the Downing Street Memo and it talks about EXACTLY this!!!!

[Cdowwe]

The answer is no, read every newspaper over the past 10 years and youll see every violation that Saddam committed against the UN. Or just go visit the Mass graves, Id say thats a good reason to take someone out of power.

[twa]

Originally posted by Larry

Then why did he?

I think you are confusing cooking the books with simply favoring intel that agreed with the administrations feelings.

I do not believe they fabricated intel,but I have no doubt they did not go out of thier way to dispell any favorable to the cause.

These memos show nothing but the administration working to garner public support for a choice that was obvious.

Personaly, I expect leaders to lead.

Then if they make the wrong choice ,get rid of them.

[twa]

Oh yeah...I think he made the RIGHT choice

[Sarge]

Hmmmmm

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

Here's the whole thing. Sounds kinda like a certain "Authentic Guard Memo"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050618/ap_on_re_eu/downing_street_memos;_ylt=Ar.4YURFRZzovjc17hBkVnWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2NzN0azRvBHNlYwN3bA—

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer

30 minutes ago

LONDON - When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the then-U.S. national security adviser didn't want to discuss Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida. She wanted to talk about "regime change" in Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led invasion more than a year later.

President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein.

In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war.

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

The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was determined to go to war as America's top ally, even though his government thought a pre-emptive attack may be illegal under international law.

"The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September," said a typed copy of a March 22, 2002 memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press and written to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

"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."

Details from Rice's dinner conversation also are included in one of the secret memos from 2002, which reveal British concerns about both the invasion and poor postwar planning by the Bush administration, which critics say has allowed the Iraqi insurgency to rage.

The eight memos — all labeled "secret" or "confidential" — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies said their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secret nature of the material.

The eight documents total 36 pages and range from 10-page and eight-page studies on military and legal options in Iraq, to brief memorandums from British officials and the minutes of a private meeting held by Blair and his top advisers.

Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert who teaches at Queen Mary College, University of London, said the documents confirmed what post-invasion investigations have found.

"The documents show what official inquiries in Britain already have, that the case of weapons of mass destruction was based on thin intelligence and was used to inflate the evidence to the level of mendacity," Dodge said. "In going to war with Bush, Blair defended the special relationship between the two countries, like other British leaders have. But he knew he was taking a huge political risk at home. He knew the war's legality was questionable and its unpopularity was never in doubt."

Dodge said the memos also show Blair was aware of the postwar instability that was likely among Iraq's complex mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds once Saddam was defeated.

The British documents confirm, as well, that "soon after 9/11 happened, the starting gun was fired for the invasion of Iraq," Dodge said.

Speculation about if and when that would happen ran throughout 2002.

On Jan. 29, Bush called Iraq, Iran and North Korea "an axis of evil." U.S. newspapers began reporting soon afterward that a U.S.-led war with Iraq was possible.

On Oct. 16, the U.S. Congress voted to authorize Bush to go to war against Iraq. On Feb. 5, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the Bush administration's case about Iraq's weapons to the U.N. Security Council. On March 19-20, the U.S.-led invasion began.

Bush and Blair both have been criticized at home since their WMD claims about Iraq proved false. But both have been re-elected, defending the conflict for removing a brutal dictator and promoting democracy in Iraq. Both administrations have dismissed the memos as old news.

Details of the memos appeared in papers early last month but the news in Britain quickly turned to the election that returned Blair to power. In the United States, however, details of the memos' contents reignited a firestorm, especially among Democratic critics of Bush.

It was in a March 14, 2002, memo that Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning, told the prime minister about the dinner he had just had with Rice in Washington.

"We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq," wrote Manning, who's now British ambassador to the United States. Rice is now Bush's secretary of state.

"It is clear that Bush is grateful for your (Blair's) support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option."

Manning said, "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed." But he also said there were signs of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks.

Blair was to meet with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on April 8, and Manning told his boss: "No doubt we need to keep a sense of perspective. But my talks with Condi convinced me that Bush wants to hear your views on Iraq before taking decisions. He also wants your support. He is still smarting from the comments by other European leaders on his Iraq policy."

A July 21 briefing paper given to officials preparing for a July 23 meeting with Blair says officials must "ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."

"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."

The British worried that, "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden. Further work is required to define more precisely the means by which the desired end state would be created, in particular what form of government might replace Saddam Hussein's regime and the time scale within which it would be possible to identify a successor."

In the March 22 memo from Foreign Office political director Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Straw, Ricketts outlined how to win public and parliamentary support for a war in Britain: "We have to be convincing that: the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for; it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran)."

Blair's government has been criticized for releasing an intelligence dossier on Iraq before the war that warned Saddam could launch chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice.

On March 25 Straw wrote a memo to Blair, saying he would have a tough time convincing the governing Labour Party that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was legal under international law.

"If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the U.S. would now be considering military action against Iraq," Straw wrote. "In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with OBL (Osama bin Laden) and al-Qaida."

He also questioned stability in a post-Saddam Iraq: "We have also to answer the big question — what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything."

[Cskin]

No, there were NO WMD programs, it was all a pack of lies built around invading a country for their natural resource. Do you honestly think if Iraq had no oil we invade? Can you honestly answer the question yes? I have a real hard time believing this looking at your first response, that we were going to invade early 2002. Just trying to see where you are coming from SHF. . .

Um.... :paranoid:... did you just climb out from under your rock? What about the Ricin factory in Northern Iraq..... Hussein was allowing an Al-Qaeda faction to train in Northern Iraq and run a lab to create Ricin poison. Where might that have ended up if we had let that continue?

What about the reports of weapons being sent to Syria via truck convoys while the UN played Grab-a$$ with Nations on the take like Germany, France, Russia, and Iraq itself? What's your definition of "serious concequences"..... when another 3000 USA citizens are killed by an increasingly emboldened Hussein who successfully thumbs his nose at the UN and decides to send a message by giving WMDs to a AL-Qaeda operative who promises to take the fight to the US homeland. Can you not see the Hussien grin?

What about the weapons Hussein declared he had.... and destroyed... yet couldn't verify their destruction or their whereabouts and simply sent a CD-Rom to the UN nearly incoherent and chock full of old documents and mistatements? You know the weapons I'm referring to.... the ones Kerry, Clinton, Clinton, Edwards, the UN, the French, the Russians, and every other person or country who said they had them when it was convenient to say so.... only to backtrack and declare Iraq NOT a THREAT when it's politically convenient to do so when either trying to win an election or immediately afterwards as a tool to rally the bretheren for the next election.

What about Hussein playing his little hide and seek game with the UN inspectors... not letting them into facilities until he'd "cleaned" them or hiding the weapons when he learned of the intended UN visits via bugged hotels?

You Liberal just can't stand it... just can't stand an administration willing to kill our enemies over there intead of fighting them over here.... on your block.... in your city. As if, when looking back through our recent history, we can clearly see that the Left's "Appease and Negotiate" policies have been a great success. See North Korea... See Libya.... See Iran.... See the PLO..... and to many others to mention. As if, the Blame America policy has worked flawlessly.

These memos surfacing is simply the Left doing whatever it can to illegitimize the fact that they've lost yet another presidential election and are witnessing a country NO LONGER willing to roll over and lie dead while our Islamofacists friends, the ones you the left wants to "win over" by building more schools and hospitals and giving more tax payer dollars to appease, build more madras and mosques and continue to amass a generation of "insurgents" and islamofacists HELLBENT on killing every westerner and every American citizen on the planet in an attempt to convert the world to Islam and take over the world.

I'd rather our military boys continue to kill as many of them..... in the thousands if they can..... until they're simply are none left to pick up arms to continue the fact. I'd cheer if they killed every Islamofacists leader until the next in line wondered whether it's worth it to pick up the clipboard and paste the bullseye on their backs. I'd applaud the reducing of the Suni triangle to a large black spot seen from space if the Jihadists got the message that they too will die if they continue.

You see... where the two American factions differ is the understanding of the big picture. The left thinks we can solve the hatred of the USA by continuing to give them money.... money they secretly use to identify and buy a large enough weapon to create a black spot here in the USA large enough to be seen from space...preferably a spot encompassing NY, Boston, and Washington DC. Why? In the name of Allah... for which they believe Islam is the only religion and all infidels not following their religion be killed with a rusty sword across their throat. The Right's view? We're having none of that and are willing to send our young men and women from our military over there..... even at the heart wrenching cost of a few thousand..... so as to protect those that would be affected by the Big Black Spot here at home. It's kill or be killed.... and that simply aint the party of Kennedy, Kerry, and Durbin now is it.

"Let's all bring our bibles and Stars of David to the community bonfire while we place our Korans in plastic so as to prevent them from being in any way desecrated"......."We are all Nazis... and the East is simply portraying the role as liberators" - Dan Durbin :doh: