Classified British documents, recently published in The Times of London, reveal that President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair secretly agreed to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein—and had discussed creating justifications to support that decision—months before congressional authorization was sought.
Eighty-eight Democratic members of Congress and one Independent have since signed a letter asking the president for an explanation, saying the report “raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration.”
The author of that letter, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the leading member on the House Judiciary Committee, said in statement, “While the president of the United States was telling the citizens and the Congress that he had no intention to start a war with Iraq, he was working very close with Tony Blair and the British leadership at making this a foregone conclusion.”
The leaked documents include the minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting, written by foreign policy aide Matthew Rycroft. Prime Minister Blair, MI-6 Chief Richard Dearlove, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, among other top security advisers, were in attendance at that meeting.
Additionally, a Cabinet briefing paper of the meeting and a Foreign Office legal opinion, written prior to an April 2002 summit between Blair and Bush in Texas, were also included in the account.
Labeled “secret and strictly personal—UK eyes only,” the minutes began with an MI-6 leader stating, “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.”
Hoon said the United States had not finalized a timeline, but would likely begin “30 days before the U.S. congressional elections.” According to the report, there was little discussion in Washington regarding the aftermath of military action.
Straw told attendees the case for war was weak because “Hussein was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.”
Goldsmith advised the group that, “the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action.” He cited that self-defense and humanitarian intervention could not be argued successfully.
Straw then suggested a plan calling for an ultimatum to the Iraqi leader, which would allow United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq.
Blair replied it would make a big difference politically and legally if Hussein refused to allow the U.N. inspectors in. “If the political context were right, people would support regime change,” Blair said. “The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.”
In September 2002, Bush outlined his case against Hussein to the U.N. General Assembly and asked for a bipartisan congressional resolution authorizing the use of force. By November, the UN Security Council had approved a resolution demanding Iraq readmit weapons inspectors but an attempt to pass a second resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq did not succeed.
Since the US invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Both the British and U.S. governments continue to deny accusations that they manipulated intelligence data to justify an invasion of Iraq.
British officials have not disputed the document’s authenticity, however a spokesman for Blair said “at the end of the day, nobody pushed the diplomatic route harder than the British government.”
On Monday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan, told reporters, while he had not seen the memo, he denied the allegations.
"The president of the United States, in a very public way, reached out to people across the world, went to the United Nations and tried to resolve this in a diplomatic manner," McClellan said.
In his letter to Bush, Conyers concluded, “This leaked document, essentially acknowledged by the Blair government, is the first confirmation that the rationales were shifting well before the invasion.”
People’s Weekly World: C.F. Niles; May, 2005