After
Downing Street
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 09 June 2005
As to US assertions that Iraq
possessed bombs, rockets and shells for poison agents, unmanned aerial
vehicles for delivering biological and chemical weapons, nuclear
weapon materials, sarin, tabun, mustard agent, precursor chemicals, VX
nerve agent, anthrax, aflotoxins, ricin and surface-to-surface Al
Hussein missiles, not one has so far been found. One vial of Strain B
Botulinum toxin is found in the domestic refrigerator of an Iraqi
scientist. It is ten years old. Hans Blix comments, "They wanted to
come to the conclusion that there were weapons. Like the former days
of the witch hunt, they are convinced that they exist. And if you see
a black cat, well, that's evidence of the
witch."
-- From David Hale's new play,
Stuff Happens
Intelligence and facts were
being fixed around the policy. Bush had already made the decision to
invade. That's what the leaked secret British intelligence document
now known as the Downing Street Minutes tells us from back in time to
July of 2002, before discussion of an Iraq invasion had made its way
anywhere near public discussion. The decision to invade Iraq had
already been made in the summer of 2002, and in order to make that
decision a reality, intelligence and facts were being fixed around the
policy of invasion.
It is interesting. The occupation of Iraq has
lasted more than 800
days, and debate over the invasion has been going on for more than a
thousand days. In that time, revelation after revelation has been put
forth exposing the lies and manipulation used by the Bush
administration to make this war happen. The first accusations of Bush
administration mendacity on this issue were revealed six months before
the invasion took place, in an October 8, 2002, article by Warren
Strobel and Jonathan Landay titled "Some Administration Officials
Expressing Misgivings on Iraq."
"While President Bush marshals congressional
and international
support for invading Iraq," reads the article, "a growing number of
military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own
government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's
double-time march toward war. These officials charge that
administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses - including distorting his links to
the al-Qaida terrorist network - have overstated the amount of
international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the
potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East."
"They charge that the administration squelches
dissenting views,"
continues the article, "and that intelligence analysts are under
intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's
argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United
States that pre-emptive military action is necessary. 'Analysts at the
working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong
pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books,' said one
official, speaking on condition of anonymity. A dozen other officials
echoed his views in interviews. No one who was interviewed disagreed.
None of the dissenting officials, who work in a number of different
agencies, would agree to speak publicly, out of fear of retribution.
But many of them have long experience in the Middle East and South
Asia, and all spoke in similar terms about their unease with the way
US political leaders are dealing with Iraq."
Since the publication of that article, we have
learned about the
Project for the New American Century, about its powerful advocates in
Washington - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bolton among them - and
about their plans from 2000 that centered around an invasion and
occupation of Iraq, based upon whatever pretext was available, to
establish a permanent military presence in the Mideast and to gain
ultimate control of petroleum management in the region.
We have learned about the secretive Office of
Special Plans and
its deliberate manipulation of Iraq weapons intelligence, about
deliberate pressure put on analysts in the CIA by powerful men like
Dick Cheney to manufacture reports of an Iraqi threat that did not
match the facts, we have heard the details of this deliberate
manipulation from government insiders like Paul O'Neill, Richard
Clarke, Tom Maertens, Roger Cressey, Donald Kerrick, Greg Thielmann,
Karen Kwiatkowski, Rand Beers and Joseph Wilson, whose wife's CIA
career was shattered by the White House through the very breed of
retribution those anonymous sources from the October 2002 article were
worried about.
We have watched our government use the attacks
of September 11 to
terrorize the American people into supporting the invasion of Iraq, we
wrapped ourselves in plastic sheeting and duct tape while handling our
mail with oven mitts so as not to be infected with the anthrax we were
told was in the hands of Saddam Hussein, we were told that they knew
the weapons were there, that they knew where the weapons were, we were
told by Bush himself his January 2003 State of the Union address that
the 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, one
million pounds of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions
to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs and uranium from
Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program were waiting in Iraq
to be given to terrorists for use against us, and that this was the
main reason, the central reason, the absolute fact which required
immediate action.
We have seen all this and more, we have seen
torture, we have seen
murder, we have seen the grinding of a civilian population in Iraq
that was no threat to us or anyone else, we have seen hundreds of
billions of dollars funneled into the bank accounts of administration
cronies under the camouflage of this "War on Terror," we have seen one
thousand six hundred and eighty-four American soldiers die and be
returned home in transfer tubes, we have seen ten times that number
wounded grievously, and we have seen more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians
killed in their homes and on their streets, the uncounted dead whose
innocent blood stains us all.
And now, after all that, it comes down to these
Downing Street
Minutes, to this small document released at the beginning of May by a
British official looking to throw sand in Tony Blair's election hopes.
After a roomful of Deep Throats and a dozen different kinds of
Pentagon Papers were exposed before withering on the media vine, the
Minutes now stand as irrefutable proof that the road to war in Iraq
was paved, with absolute intent, with lies and deceit and misdirection
and fraud.
For a time, it seemed as though these Minutes
would join the rest
of the Iraq revelations, discarded in the media gutter, run off the
road by earth-shattering stories about Michael Jackson and Paris
Hilton and Robert Blake and Martha Stewart and American Idol. Lately,
and with a concerted push by activists and a number of members of the
House of Representatives, the Downing Street Minutes are beginning to
garner deserved and focused attention.
Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post wrote on
June 8th that "After
six weeks in the political wilderness, the Downing Street Memo
yesterday finally burst into the White House - and into the
headlines." USA Today reported on the same day that, "A simmering
controversy over whether American media have ignored a secret British
memo about how President Bush built his case for war with Iraq bubbled
over into the White House on Tuesday."
Descriptions and condemnations of the Minutes
have begun appearing
in most of the major newspapers, and the document has become
contentious fodder for debate on the cable and network news stations.
White House apologists are out in force, and the spinners are
spinning, but the simple facts of the matter dwarf the flaccid excuses
and explanations petering out of the administration.
The Minutes were thrown into the faces of Bush
and Blair during a
joint press conference on June 7th. The two leaders were asked, "On
Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing
Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what
happened? Could both of you respond?"
Bush replied, "Well, I - you know, I read kind
of the
characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out
in the middle of his race. I'm not sure who 'they dropped it out' is,
but - I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there. And
somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use
military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the
truth." The rest of his answer was a lame rehash of the old lies, that
the decision wasn't made before the facts were in, that the facts
weren't manipulated, that war was the last option. Bush was visibly
angered by the question, and not long after, brought the press
conference to an abrupt end.
The record is clear, the evidence piled before
us, treachery after
stacked treachery. Plenty of powerful people would like this document
to go away, not excepting the folks in the news media, because the
document provides a capstone exposure of just how flawed, biased,
shabby and ultimately deadly their coverage of this issue has been.
Don't doubt for a second that the scions of our journalistic realm
would like the Minutes to fade, because as long as the document stands
in the light, their complicity in this catastrophe is all too clear.
It isn't going away. A massive coalition of
activist groups have
come together to form the
After
Downing Street Coalition, which
seeks coverage of this issue in the media and accountability on this
issue from Congress and the administration. Rep. John Conyers and 88
other House members have delivered a letter to Bush demanding answers,
and nearly 200,000 Americans have signed their support for this
letter. The number of signatures grows by the day.
This moment is described as the tipping point.
Large majorities of
Americans, in every poll, believe the Iraq invasion was unnecessary
and the casualties thus far inflicted to be unacceptable. For the
first time, the poll numbers show that a clear majority of the
American people no longer believe that George W. Bush is keeping them
safe. Bi-partisan coalitions are forming in Congress to demand that
the US withdraw from Iraq and give that nation back to the people who
live there, and those coalitions are edging towards majority-sized
numbers. Legislation has been presented demanding withdrawal, and more
is in the offing.
And now, the Minutes. Tomorrow, the Minutes.
Every day, the
Minutes, until there is a reckoning.
—————————————————————
Russ Ferriday, CEO
Topia Custom Software Solutions
tel: (+1) (805) 748 1552
web: http://topia.com
skype: ferriday