The Secret Way to War:

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The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History (Paperback)
by Mark Danner, Frank Rich (Preface)

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The secret way to war
By Mark Danner

Note
In its June 9 issue, the New York Review of Books will be the first American print publication to publish the full British "smoking gun" document, the secret memorandum of the minutes of a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's top advisers in July 2002, eight months before the Iraq war commenced. Leaked to the London Sunday Times, which first published it on May 1, the memo offers irrefutable proof of the way in which the George W Bush administration made its decision to invade Iraq - without significant consultation, reasonable intelligence on Iraq, or any desire to explore ways to avoid war - and well before seeking a congressional or United Nations mandate of any sort.

It was October 16, 2002, and the United States Congress had just voted to authorize the president to go to war against Iraq. When Bush came before members of his cabinet and Congress gathered in the East Room of the White House and addressed the American people, he was in a somber mood befitting a leader speaking frankly to free citizens about the gravest decision their country could make.

The 107th Congress, the president said, had just become "one of the few called by history to authorize military action to defend our country and the cause of peace". But, he hastened to add, no one should assume that war was inevitable. Though "Congress has now authorized the use of force", the president said emphatically, "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary."

President Bush went on: "Our goal is to fully and finally remove a real threat to world peace and to America. Hopefully this can be done peacefully. Hopefully we can do this without any military action. Yet, if Iraq is to avoid military action by the international community, it has the obligation to prove compliance with all the world's demands. It's the obligation of Iraq."

Iraq, Bush said, still had the power to prevent war by "declaring and destroying all its weapons of mass destruction" - but if Iraq did not declare and destroy those weapons, the president warned, the United States would "go into battle, as a last resort".

It is safe to say that, at the time, it surprised almost no one when the Iraqis answered Bush's demand by repeating their claim that in fact there were no weapons of mass destruction. As we now know, the Iraqis had in fact destroyed these weapons, probably years before Bush's ultimatum: "the Iraqis" - in the words of chief US weapons inspector David Kaye - "were telling the truth".

As Americans watch their young men and women fighting in the third year of a bloody counterinsurgency war in Iraq - a war that has now killed more than 1,600 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis - they are left to ponder "the unanswered question" of what would have happened if the United Nations weapons inspectors had been allowed - as all the major powers except the United Kingdom had urged they should be - to complete their work. What would have happened if the UN weapons inspectors had been allowed to prove, before the US went "into battle", what David Kaye and his colleagues finally proved afterward?

Thanks to a formerly secret memorandum published by the London Sunday Times on May 1, during the run-up to the British elections, we now have a partial answer to that question. The memo, which records the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair's senior foreign policy and security officials, shows that even as President Bush told Americans in October 2002 that he "hope[d] the use of force will not become necessary" - that such a decision depended on whether or not the Iraqis complied with his demands to rid themselves of their weapons of mass destruction - the president had in fact already definitively decided, at least three months before, to choose this "last resort" of going "into battle" with Iraq. Whatever the Iraqis chose to do or not do, the president's decision to go to war had long since been made.

On July 23, 2002, eight months before American and British forces invaded, senior British officials met with Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss Iraq. The gathering, similar to an American "principals meeting", brought together Geoffrey Hoon, defense secretary; Jack Straw, foreign secretary; Lord Goldsmith, attorney general; John Scarlett, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which advises the prime minister; Sir Richard Dearlove, also known as "C", head of MI6 (the British equivalent of the US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA); David Manning, the equivalent of the national security adviser; Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the Defense Staff (or CDS, equivalent to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff); Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff; Alastair Campbell, director of strategy (Blair's communications and political adviser); and Sally Morgan, director of government relations.

After John Scarlett began the meeting with a summary of intelligence on Iraq - notably, that "the regime was tough and based on extreme fear" and that thus the "only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action", "C" offered a report on his visit to Washington, where he had conducted talks with George Tenet, his counterpart at the CIA, and other high officials. This passage is worth quoting in full:

"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 [Hussein], through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [National Security Council] 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."

Seen from today's perspective, this short paragraph is a strikingly clear template for the future, establishing these points:

1) By mid-July 2002, eight months before the war began, President Bush had decided to invade and occupy Iraq.
2) Bush had decided to "justify" the war "by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD".
3) Already "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy".
4) Many at the top of the administration did not want to seek approval from the United Nations (going "the UN route").
5) Few in Washington seemed much interested in the aftermath of the war.

We have long known, thanks to Bob Woodward and others, that military planning for the Iraq war began as early as November 21, 2001, after Bush ordered Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to look at "what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to", and that Secretary Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, who headed Central Command, were briefing American senior officials on the progress of military planning during the late spring and summer of 2002; indeed, a few days after the meeting in London leaks about specific plans for a possible Iraq war appeared on the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

What the Downing Street memo confirms for the first time is that President Bush had decided, no later than July 2002, to "remove Saddam, through military action", that war with Iraq was "inevitable" - and that what remained was simply to establish and develop the modalities of justification; that is, to come up with a means of "justifying" the war and "fixing" the "intelligence and facts ... around the policy". The great value of the discussion recounted in the memo, then, is to show, for the governments of both countries, a clear hierarchy of decision-making. By July 2002 at the latest, war had been decided on; the question at issue then was how to justify it - how to "fix", as it were, what Blair will later call "the political context". Specifically, though by this point in July the president had decided to go to war, he had not yet decided to go to the United Nations and demand inspectors; indeed, as "C" points out, those on the National Security Council - the senior security officials of the US government - "had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record". This would later change, largely as a result of the political concerns of these very people gathered together at 10 Downing Street.

After Admiral Boyce offered a brief discussion of the war plans then on the table and the defense secretary said a word or two about timing - "the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US congressional elections" - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw got to the heart of the matter: not whether or not to invade Iraq but how to justify such an invasion.

"The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss [the timing of the war] with [US secretary of state] Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Given that Saddam was not threatening to attack his neighbors and that his weapons of mass destruction program was less extensive than those of a number of other countries, how does one justify attacking? Foreign Secretary Straw had an idea: "We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."

The British realized they needed "help with the legal justification for the use of force" because, as the attorney general pointed out, rather dryly, "The desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action." Which is to say, the simple desire to overthrow the leadership of a given sovereign country does not make it legal to invade that country; on the contrary. And, said the attorney general, of the "three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention, or [United Nations Security Council] authorization", the first two "could not be the base in this case". In other words, Iraq was not attacking the United States or the United Kingdom, so the leaders could not claim to be acting in self-defense; nor was Iraq's leadership in the process of committing genocide, so the United States and the United Kingdom could not claim to be invading for humanitarian reasons. [1] This left Security Council authorization as the only conceivable legal justification for war. But how to get it?

At this point in the meeting Prime Minister Tony Blair weighed in. He had heard his foreign minister's suggestion about drafting an ultimatum demanding that Saddam let back in the United Nations inspectors. Such an ultimatum could be politically critical, said Blair - but only if the Iraqi leader turned it down.

"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 and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD ... If the political context were right, people would support regime change. 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."

Here the inspectors were introduced, but as a means to create the missing casus belli. If the UN could be made to agree on an ultimatum that Saddam accept inspectors, and if Saddam then refused to accept them, the Americans and the British would be well on their way to having a legal justification to go to war (the attorney general's third alternative of UN Security Council authorization).

Thus, the idea of UN inspectors was introduced not as a means to avoid war, as President Bush repeatedly assured Americans, but as a means to make war possible. War had been decided on; the problem under discussion here was how to make, in the prime minister's words, "the political context ...right". The "political strategy" - at the center of which, as with the Americans, was weapons of mass destruction, for "it was the regime that was producing the WMD" - must be strong enough to give "the military plan the space to work". Which is to say, once the allies were victorious the war would justify itself. The demand that Iraq accept UN inspectors, especially if refused, could form the political bridge by which the allies could reach their goal: "regime change" through "military action".

But there was a problem: as the foreign secretary pointed out, "on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences". While the British considered legal justification for going to war critical - they, unlike the Americans, are members of the International Criminal Court - the Americans did not. Foreign Secretary Straw suggested that given "US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum". The defense secretary, Geoffrey Hoon, was more blunt, arguing "that if the prime minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the prime minister to set out the political context to Bush." The key negotiation in view at this point, in other words, was not with Saddam over letting in the United Nations inspectors - both parties hoped he would refuse to admit them, and thus provide the justification for invading. The key negotiation would be between the Americans, who had shown "resistance" to the idea of involving the United Nations at all, and the British, who were more concerned than their American cousins about having some kind of legal fig leaf for attacking Iraq. Three weeks later, Foreign Secretary Straw arrived in the Hamptons to "discreetly explore the ultimatum" with then-secretary of state Powell, perhaps the only senior American official who shared some of the British concerns; as Straw told the secretary, in Bob Woodward's account, "If you are really thinking about war and you want us Brits to be a player, we cannot be unless you go to the United Nations." [2]
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