Maine Owl

The secret memo

British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with President Bush on January 31, 2003 and had joint press availability that afternoon. The resulting message was one aimed more directly at the United Nations than just at Saddam Hussein or the public at large. Naturally, it was supposed to be assumed that Iraq had the weapons. This is a crucial point because if that is an actual fact, the demand that Saddam Hussein do some kind of visible laying down of the weapons makes sense. If none of the "proscribed" weapons exist, this demand is nonsensical.

It was nonsensical and three years later in February 2006 a secret memo suggesting the war leaders knew this at the time was revealed in the British press. More on that below the fold...

Of course the rhetoric that day was laden with post-9/11 imagery of a resolute Bush whose "vision shifted dramatically after September the 11th" because he realized "the stakes." That's important because it allows Bush to associate Saddam with a threat that is becoming uncontrolled. "The doctrine of containment just doesn't hold any water," Bush said.

But the real punch here is delivered against the United Nations. President Bush proclaims, "I'm the guy who went to the UN," as if it was a trip to the dentist his mommy made him do. The press did press a bit on the concept of a "second" U.N. Security Council resolution to follow UNSCR 1441. Presumably, the only acceptable content to Bush and Blair of such a resolution would have been to define as war the "serious consequences" issued in 1441 for the "breach" that Iraq supposedly had committed. A second resolution would be "welcome," but only if it authorized what the president was planning to do anyway. They already had decided that, "1441 gives us the authority to move without any second resolution." (As it turned out, no such rubber stamp could be obtained. This is a HUGE deal with respect to the legality of the war. More on this below the fold and in later posts.)

So there was not to be more time for process. Bush and Blair agreed, "a matter of weeks, not months" is what was left. There would be no "games," as Blair put it. Colin Powell would go to New York and deliver an airtight case against Iraq. Iraq had only two choices left, one impossible: produce weapons that they truthfully stated in their official declaration did not exist, or be "disarmed by force." The rest is history.

Was the really important thing on Bush's & Blair's minds the disposal of the weapons inspection process, which could derail the war? Listen to the excerpts, and tell me what you think. Then below the fold read about the "secret memo." Listen HERE, 2-1/2-minute AUDIO FILE:




Now let's take this apart. What UNSCR 1441 (November 8, 2002) actually says, along with a bunch of tough supporting rhetoric, is this:

[The Security Council] decides to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process established by resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent resolutions of the Council;

It does not say Iraq must lay physical weapons on the table. It says the paperwork must be completed on the post-1991-Gulf-War process. If you read through the comments of non-aggressor countries like France and Germany, it's clear they did not agree with the president that no second resolution was needed! War was not to be "automatic."

In secret, this was of great concern, especially to Tony Blair, because it would be (and is to this day) very difficult to argue that the subsequent attack was not an illegal war of aggression. At minimum, according to the true, original version of legal advice given by U.K. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, hard evidence of weapons would be required if the war was to be legal. To this day, the whole legal case for the war rests on lack of paperwork "acceptable" to the U.S. documenting destruction of by-then-non-existent weapons stockpiles that Saddam Hussein did in fact destroy. Of course, no form of such paperwork ever would have been acceptable to the war Administration.

Here is the HUGE story on this, which barely registered in American news the first week of February 2006, three years into the war. According to the story, the contents of a secret report on the Bush-Blair meeting on January 31, 2003, was seen...

by Phillipe Sands, a QC and professor of international law at University College, London. Professor Sands last year exposed the doubts shared by Foreign Office lawyers about the legality of the invasion in disclosures which eventually forced the prime minister to publish the full legal advice given to him by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith.

The memo seen by Prof Sands reveals:

• Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]".
• Mr Bush even expressed the hope that a defector would be extracted from Iraq and give a "public presentation about Saddam's WMD". He is also said to have referred Mr Blair to a "small possibility" that Saddam would be "assassinated".
• Mr Blair told the US president that a second UN resolution would be an "insurance policy", providing "international cover, including with the Arabs" if anything went wrong with the military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning oil wells, killing children, or fomenting internal divisions within Iraq.
• Mr Bush told the prime minister that he "thought it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups". Mr Blair did not demur, according to the book.

So, President Bush knew as early as January 2003 that Iraq was void of weapons of mass destruction. Good grief! At the January 31, 2003 White House meeting, Bush proposed flying US spy planes painted with UN colors over Iraq in order to gin up causus belli!! The case for war over WMD was non-existent and other rationale were sought.

In the end, the British Parliament authorized military action in Iraq on a bizarre legal theory concerning the post-Gulf-War resolution from 1991, in the absence of genuine authority from the UN Security Council. Contrary to the word of President Bush, UNSCR 1441 did not confer automatic authority for war without further Security Council action. All members' comments at the time on UNSCR 1441, save for some ludicrous unilateralism from then US Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte, "welcomed the lack of `automaticity' in the final resolution."

Of course, there is a good reason President Bush continues to this day to promulgate mythology over the legality of the war-?it may one day become his post-office defense in a war crimes trial, against the charge of the supreme crime of Aggression.