Memos Show Blair's Government Worried About an Unstable Postwar Iraq

[mom cat]

Memos Show Blair's Government Worried About an Unstable Postwar Iraq
The Associated Press
Published: Jun 18, 2005


http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBFJPA44AE.html



LONDON (AP) - Long before the Iraq war began, Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers concluded that the Bush administration and the U.S. military weren't adequately prepared for rebuilding Iraq once Saddam Hussein was driven from power.
Today, as U.S. forces fight a deadly insurgency in Iraq, the concerns expressed about a postwar Iraq in three of the leaked secret Downing Street memos seem prescient.

A July 21, 2002, paper written for top government officials preparing to meet with Blair said: "The U.S. government's military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace. But, as yet, it lacks a political framework. In particular, little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the aftermath and how to shape it."

In a March 14, 2002, memo, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning, told the prime minister that President Bush "had yet to find the answers to the big questions" about an Iraq war, including: "what happens on the morning after."

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw questioned the stability of a post-Saddam Iraq.

[MasonJar]

1. On Yahoo along with article on all mems. DU them. Keep them

up.

[Malva Zebrina]

3. can't believe this was on Yahoo front page

Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans
FILE ** President Bush answers a reporter's question as British Prime Minister Tony Blair listens in during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, in this Tuesday, June 7, 2005 file photo. When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after 9/11, 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. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)


Can't believe it.

[Blue Belle]

4. It was the first story on Excite.com's front page too...

the funny thing is Excite.com leans increadibly to the right on politics. I feel this is a little step towards victory! ;)

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050618/D8AQ5J080.html

[ooglymoogly]

38. be sure to rate this story at the bottom

only at three stars

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. AP: Memos show British Concerns over Iraq Plans

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."

Much more: http://tinyurl.com/b65ex

[otohara]

8. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam

Freedom MY ASS!

[A Brand New World]

24. That's my personal opinion too on the reason for this illegal and

immoral war - a grudge between Bush and Saddam. The "he tried to kill my daddy" scenario. I think * is too much of a evil simpleton to think too far beyond that. The other members of the cabal may have other, more sophisticated reasons like oil, PNAC, etc. but I really think *'s boils down simplistically to a grudge.

[CJCRANE]

27. Yes, he appears

to have the logic skills of a 5 year-old.

When you see him say "Saddam was a bad man" it really seems like he believes that's a good enough reason.

(Plus remember in the first Presidential debate he seemed genuinely surprised that Kerry was criticizing him over the Iraq War).

[stickdog]

5. Yep. Finally the AP gives the DSM's full treatment. On a Saturday

seven weeks later.

[mom cat]

6. BE SURE TO SEND TREM YOUR OWN MEMO! See the link for LT Es

at the bottom of the article.

[mom cat]

7. You can send them an LTE at the link at the bottom of the story!

[rodeodance]

9. It was a reckless rush to invasion and BushCo needs to be accountable.

......."Most of the assessments from the U.S. have assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq's WMD threat," he said. "But none has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured, and how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better. Iraq has had NO history of democracy, so no one has this habit or experience."........

[mcg]

10. USA Today main headline: Memos reveal British concern...

USA Today front page headline:

Memos reveal British concern
Downing St. dubious of U.S. efforts in Iraq

http://www.usatoday.com/

story link:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-06-18-downing-street-memos_x.htm

Downing Street memos show Blair's government worried about postwar Iraq

"LONDON (AP) — Long before the Iraq war began, Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers concluded that the Bush administration and the U.S. military weren't adequately prepared for rebuilding Iraq once Saddam Hussein was driven from power." ...

----

The neocons are not into "nation building", they are into nation destroying.

[wildcat78]

11. Snowball starting?

It's also on the front page of yahoo.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for the Bushies.

[Arugula Latte]

12. There's also a story on Comcast.net's home page

w/ a picture of Bush and Blair.

[ruggerson]

13. It's also the lead story on Yahoo

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050618/ap_on_re_eu/downing_street_memos


Vote it up!

The dam is breaking folks.

[mcg]

15. and also email it

[young_at_heart]

14. Rove, etc. will just dismiss this, like everything else

But......if the MSM cares (even a little) to ask decent questions and enough Americans are angry, then maybe this will have legs!

[MichiganVote]

16. It will be...poor Rummy, you bad people go pick on someone your own size

[enid602]

17. *

And yet, despite Blair's concerns and reservations, he decided to go along with *, reportedly because he had already promised he would during a trip to Crawford. Not a very good reason to commit your country to war. What did * promise Blair, or more likely, what did he have on him?

[u2spirit]

23. I have read a time or two

that Blair has a cushy job lined up for him at Carlyle after he leaves no. 10. It would explain a lot.

[rodeodance]

26. maybe he was just taken in by Jr's folksyness?

[Carolab]

18. AP: Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans (on Yahoo)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050618/ap_on_re_eu/downing_street_memos

Scroll down and see all the links to the memos!!!

It hit the AP wire service!

[ZappaForPrez]

19. "cause I am the slime on the Video...Oozing along on your living room

floor

[longship]

20. Recommended.

:kick:

[patdem]

21. Do NOT forget to rate/recommend this story-fixed to recommend

it is only 3 stars..we need to bump that up!

Thanks for the link and what a story! on Yahoo no less..i am sure they are read by more than even the NY Times/Post or the Washington Post/Times...great story

[BR_Parkway]

22. Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans

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."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050618/ap_on_re_eu/downing_street_memos

[Moderator]

25. Kick

[wakeme2008]

28. kicking Rice... nt

[NNN0LHI]

29. British memos: Iraq war sounds like mere 'grudge'

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-blair19.html

LONDON -- When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the 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.''

[BooScout]

30. How much proof...........

...does the American public need to see the truth about Bush?

[Lochloosa]

31. One of the great things about this..

It's destroying any chance of the Bitch Hitler Rice from running in '08...couldn't have happened to a nicer He/She...

[Jacobin]

32. "He tried to kiyul mah Dayidee"

Anyone remember Smirky's speech in Houston prior to the invasion when he floated this justification de jour in an ad lib?.....which justification was quickly quashed.

Dork.

[bunkerbuster1]

33. It's a grudge, and so much more!

To PNAC, it's the American Empire.

To the Dominionists, it's all about readying the planet for Jayzuss to dump Israeli Jews into a pit of flames.

To the usual common thugs, it's killin' brown people.

And (to be fair) to some, it's about liberating the Iraqis and establishing a humane, democratic government there.

None of which were given as original reasons to go to war.

[JohnnyRingo]

34. But Saddam tried to kill his dad....

Buxh having his own "personal army" is taking the concept of Commander in chief a bit far.

[NightOwwl]

41. Over 1,700 American troops dead and still counting....

thousands wounded. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends and so on...millions of lives destroyed. And for what purpose?

Read it and weep:

Bush's Possession of Saddam's Gun Both Freudian and Traditional
From the New York Times (June 21 2004)

The story of how President Bush ended up with Saddam Hussein's pistol mounted in his private study off the Oval Office has dribbled out in the last few weeks, and it is a good one.

As first reported in Time magazine, the soldiers who captured Mr. Hussein in December presented the mounted sidearm as a gift to Mr. Bush in a visit to the White House. They were members of the Army's Delta Force team, Mr. Bush later told reporters, and they had confiscated the unloaded pistol from Mr. Hussein's lap when they pulled him out of his spider hole near Tikrit.

"It's now the property of the U.S. government," Mr. Bush said at a news conference this month in Savannah, Ga., when asked specifically about the pistol and whether he would return it to the people of Iraq. What the gun tells us about the president, the war and the relationship of the Bush family to Mr. Hussein is another story entirely. It is in many ways better, or at least more interesting, than the first.

The Iraqi dictator, after all, tried to assassinate Mr. Bush's father in 1993, when he was only a year out of the White House, as payback for the 1991 Persian Gulf war, which the first President Bush had waged on Mr. Hussein. In other words, the gun is more than a gun, at least according to the Freudians.

"It's the phallic equivalent of a scalp - I mean that quite seriously," said Stanley A. Renshon, a psychoanalyst and political scientist at the City University of New York who has just completed a book, to be published by Palgrave/Macmillan in September, called "In His Father's Shadow: The Transformations of George W. Bush."

In Mr. Renshon's view, Mr. Bush went to war for geo-strategic reasons, but there was a powerful personal element as well. In short, Mr. Hussein's gun is a trophy that symbolizes victories both military and psychic.

"There are a lot of different levels at which this operates," Mr. Renshon said. "The critics say this is all about finishing up Daddy's mess. I think that is way too off base to be serious. But psychology operates regardless of party line, and this seems to me to be a case in which psychology can't help but express itself, because it's a natural outgrowth of what he's been through and how he feels about it. It's perfectly normal to me."

Michael Sherry, a military historian at Northwestern University, noted that there was a long record of soldiers seizing the weapons of vanquished enemies as the ultimate symbols of defeat. (Even so, it is illegal for American soldiers to take guns off an enemy and keep them for themselves, which is almost certainly why the president declared that the pistol was United States government property rather than his own.)

Relinquishing weapons has historically been part of surrender ceremonies, even though Ulysses S. Grant chose not to ask for Robert E. Lee's sword at Appomattox Court House in 1865 and excluded officers' sidearms from the weapons that the Army of Northern Virginia was expected to turn over to him.

Mr. Hussein's pistol, which Mr. Bush shows off to visitors, is a different matter altogether, Mr. Sherry said, because it was presidential acquisition by force. "Whatever specific symbolism Bush may privately attach to this token, it does make it look to the external viewer that he sees this in very personal terms," Mr. Sherry said. In the end, he said, "I'm left feeling that it sounds kind of childish...."

http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/5780.html

[Lindacooks]

42. That's exactly what it was.

And chimpy committed an unforgivable sin. He used American citizens as pawns in his own little grudge match. Oh, and he killed more than 100,000 Iraqis because 'Saddam tried to kill my dad!!'.

Bit of advice for you, chimpy: grudge matches are settled between the two parties, not fought using other people's children. Since you're a sniveling coward, you no doubt know this, but in your little fantasy land, you thought you could get away with it.

WRONG.

[polemic_realism]

35. a rather large wedge

if the idea can be solidified that * did this out of his own sense of "vengeance" or merely as some personal grudge, i think THAT would be sufficient, when coupled with the waste of 230 BILLION dollars of the taxpayers money, to turn the "average" american against the current administration.

Please do not let this stone gather moss

[NightOwwl]

40. Excellent point.

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[OKNancy]

36. Kick again

[Patty Diana]

37. Some alerts I just got from google re DSM and Impeachment

http://www.profindpages.com/news/2005/06/18/MN987.htm from russia http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June05/Random0618.htm from dissident voice re impeachment http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m12732&l=i&size=1&hd=0 italian view on DSM http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=6351 antiwar,com on DSM http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0616-31.htm vets for peace call for impeachment http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June05/Sanders0618.htm bush treason calls for impeachment http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050617/MEMO17/TPInternational/Americas Bonifaz calls for impeacment

[ooglymoogly]

39. abfab links thanks

[goclark]

43. Such a sweet word IM PEACH MENT

Let's keep the pressure on!