[JNV] The Secret 23 July 2002 Downing Street Memo - Key Quotes And Commentary: Using the Inspectors

[Milan Rai]

Laying the Ground for the Iraq War

The Secret 23 July 2002 Downing Street Memo - Key Quotes And Commentary

The full text of this top secret memo (taken from the Sunday Times, 1 May  
2005) is on the JNV site <www.j-n-v.org>.
The following key quotes and brief commentary are also on the site,  
formatted for emphasis, and with links to relevant documentation where  
possible.


The meeting on 23 July 2002 involved the major decision-makers in the  
drive to war: Tony Blair; Geoff Hoon (Defence Secretary); Jack Straw  
(Foreign Secretary); the Government's legal adviser Lord Goldsmith (the  
Attorney General); the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee (the top  
level of British intelligence) John Scarlett; Sir Richard Dearlove, the  
head of MI6 (the British equivalent of the CIA), referred to as 'C'; David  
Manning, Tony Blair's Foreign Policy Adviser (equivalent to the US  
National Security Advisor); Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the  
Defence Staff (CDS); Jonathan Powell, head of staff at Number 10; and  
Alistair Campbell, then director of strategy.

The minutes were drawn up for David Manning by his assistant, Matthew  
Rycroft.



Key Quotes:



INTELLIGENCE BEING FIXED AROUND THE POLICY

'C', the head of MI6, the British equivalent of the CIA, said that after  
visting Washington, 'Military action was now seen as inevitable.'

He went on 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,  
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.'

The intelligence chief remarked that in the US, 'the intelligence and  
facts were being fixed around the policy.'



IRAQ NOT A THREAT

Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary, said, 'the case was thin': 'Saddam was not  
threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of  
Libya, North Korea or Iran.'



USING THE INSPECTORS

Straw continued: 'We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to  
allow back in the UN weapons inspectors.' Why? 'This would also help with  
the legal justification for the use of force.'

Tony Blair emphasised this: 'The Prime Minister said that it would make a  
big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the  
UN inspectors.'



REGIME CHANGE

The Attorney General 'said that the desire for regime change was not a  
legal base for military action.'

Tony Blair countered that 'Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense  
that it was the regime that was producing the WMD.'

He added: 'If the political context were right, people would support  
regime change.'



WAR IS INEVITABLE - JULY 2002

In the conclusions of the meeting, it was minuted that, 'We should work on  
the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action.'

Tony Blair said, on 23 July 2002, '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.'



Commentary



INEVITABILITY

The key issue was not how the world could disarm Iraq - either by  
inspections or by war. The key issues were whether the war plan would  
work, and if the 'political context' could be created in which the public  
would 'support regime change' and give the military 'the space to work'.

The day after this meeting concluded that 'the UK would take part in any  
military action', Tony Blair said in the House of Commons, 'We have not  
got to the stage of military action. If we do get to that stage, at any  
point in time, we will, of course, make sure that Parliament is properly  
consulted (col 975)... we have not yet reached the point of decision (col  
980).'



USING THE INSPECTORS

War was certain. It was just a matter of shaping public opinion, and  
drawing up good plans for battle.

In this strategy, the inspectors would be a critical tool - not a tool for  
disarmament, but a tool for public relations.



INSPECTIONS: THE WHITE HOUSE NIGHTMARE

The US/UK strategy of using the inspectors as a device was already clear  
in July 2002. We pointed out in Briefing 19 that, in the White House, UN  
weapons inspectors were seen as a potential problem rather than a solution:

‘Key figures in the White House believe that demands on Saddam to re-admit  
United Nations weapons inspectors should be set so high that he would fail  
to meet them unless he provided officials with total freedom.’ (Times, 16  
February 2002, p. 19)

A US intelligence official has said the White House ‘will not take yes for  
an answer’. (Guardian, 14 February 2002, p. 1)

Seymour Hersh, the noted US investigative reporter wrote in December 2001:  
‘Inside the Administration, there is general consensus on one issue,  
officials told me: there will be no further effort to revive the UN  
inspection regime withdrawn in late 1998’. (New Yorker, 24 December 2001,  
p. 63)

According to one former US official, ‘The hawks’ nightmare is that  
inspectors will be admitted, will not be terribly vigorous and not find  
anything. Economic sanctions would be eased, and the U.S. will be unable  
to act... and the closer it comes to the 2004 elections the more difficult  
it will be to take the military route.’ (Washington Post, 15 April 2002,  
p. A01)

'The more hawkish members of the US defence department are said to favour  
direct military action on Iraq, which would be more difficult if weapons  
inspectors were on the ground.' (FT, 5 March 2002, p. 10)

US Secretary of State Colin Powell (allegedly a 'dove') made it clear that  
the the inspectors were irrelevant: ‘US policy is that, regardless of what  
the inspectors do, the people of Iraq and the people of the region would  
be better off with a different regime in Baghdad. The United States  
reserves its option to do whatever it believes might be appropriate to see  
if there can be a regime change.’ The issue of the inspectors was a  
‘separate and distinct and different’ matter from the US position on  
Saddam Hussein’s leadership, said Powell. (Guardian, 6 May 2002)

The ‘principals’ in the Bush Administration ‘fear that Saddam is working  
his own UN angle for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, whose  
presence could make the US look like a bully if it invades.’ ‘"The White  
House’s biggest fear is that UN weapons inspectors will be allowed to go  
in," says a top Senate foreign policy aide.’ (Time magazine, 13 May 2002,  
p. 38)



REFUSING INSPECTIONS - MARCH 2002

That is why, when on 1 March 2002, Baghdad invited Britain to send weapons  
inspectors to Iraq, Britain refused the offer.

'Iraq is ready to receive right now any British team sent by Blair and  
accompanied by the British media to show the world where and how is Iraq  
developing such weapons,’ said an unidentified Iraqi spokesperson in the  
official al-Thawra newspaper.' (Associated Press, 1 March 2002)

This news wire report was ignored by the Government, and by the media,  
apart from a buried note (Independent, 4 March 2002, p. 2) and a one-line  
reference in a Times editorial (8 March 2002). As we commented at the  
time, 'Such offers should be explored, not ignored.'



REFUSING INSPECTIONS - SEPTEMBER 2002

When Iraq did unconditionally accept the re-entry of UN weapons inspectors  
six months later, the United States was shocked and dismayed.

The Independent's Rupert Cornwell wrote that 'emerging as the key issue of  
the Iraq crisis' was the US 'insistence that United Nations inspectors  
cannot return until the UN has passed a stern new resolution spelling out  
the consequences if Baghdad fails to cooperate'.

'In a thinly-veiled threat, the Secretary of State Colin Powell, regarded  
as the spokesman of the moderates within the Bush administration bluntly  
told a Congressional committee that the US would prevent the inspectors  
return unless they were armed with a resolution spelling out the  
consequences if Iraq did not grant them full and unfettered access to all  
suspect sites. (Independent, 21 September 2002, p. 11)

Colin Powell told the Congressional committee, 'There is standing  
authority for the inspection team but there are weaknesses in that  
authority which make the current regime unacceptable. And we need a new  
resolution to clean that up and put new conditions on the Iraqis so that  
there is no wriggling out . . . if somebody tried to move the  
[inspectors'] team in right now, we would find ways to thwart that.'  
(Telegraph, 21 September 2002, p. 20)



IRAQ REFUSES TO REFUSE

Tony Blair has sought to defend himself by saying on 1 May 2005, 'The idea  
that we had decided definitively for military action at that stage is  
wrong, and disproved by the fact that several months later we went back to  
the UN to get a final resolution, and actually the conflict didn't begin  
until four months after that.'

But the US and UK only went to the Security Council for what turned out to  
be Resolution 1441 after Iraq had accepted the weapons inspectors' return,  
and the purpose of this maneouvre was to prevent the immediate entry of  
inspector to Iraq, and to 'put new conditions on the Iraqis' (Colin  
Powell).

The new Resolution was not pursued because the US and UK would only go to  
war with the authority of the UN. The new Resolution sought in the hopes  
that something could be crafted that would look reasonable to the outside  
world, but which would be so objectionable that it would be rejected by  
Iraq.

With much tougher inspection rights and with strong language 'spelling out  
the consequences if Baghdad failed to cooperate', the new Resolution was  
supposed to push the Iraqis into refusing to admit the inspectors. The new  
rights of inspection were supposed to be so objectionable that Baghdad  
would refuse to permit the inspectors to return (ideally), or would fail  
to abide by the letter of the Resolution (the fall-back position); and the  
'consequences' in the Resolution could then be applied (in other words,  
war).

The Resolution was designed to be refused.

This strategy had its British roots in the July 2002 meeting, when Jack  
Straw said: 'We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow  
back in the UN weapons inspectors.' And Tony Blair added 'that it would  
make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow  
in the UN inspectors.'

But Iraq refused to refuse the inspectors, and Hans Blix and his  
colleagues were able to do valuable work. They were well on the way to  
discovering that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (the ultimate  
White House nightmare scenario) when they were ordered out of the country  
on 17 March 2003.



CONCLUSION

The July 2002 memo confirms what was long known:

that the British Government had decided on war by mid-2002;

that the evidence and intelligence was 'fixed around the policy' rather  
than the evidence determining the policy;

that dislodging Saddam Hussein (misleadingly referred to as 'regime  
change') rather than disarmament was the key goal from the very beginning;

that UN inspectors were seen from the outset as a public relations device  
rather than as a means of disarmament;

that Britain (and the US) were trying to create a situation in which  
Baghdad would refuse to re-admit the inspectors, in order to create a  
political and legal justification for a war they were already committed to  
for other reasons;

that Tony Blair and his ministers lied through their teeth.



-- 
Milan Rai
Justice Not Vengeance
www.j-n-v.org