Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Nation): A New Downing Street Memo

A New Downing Street Memo
By Katrina vanden Heuvel

The British government memo on Iraq, reported in today's New York Times, is perhaps even more important than the Downing Street memo. The five-page memo--of a January 31, 2003 Oval Office meeting between Bush, Blair and six of their top advisers--reveals the Bush Administration's fierce determination to invade Iraq even without a second UN resolution, and even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons. Indeed, confronted with the possibility of not finding any weapons before the planned invasion, Bush talks of ways to provoke a confrontation with Iraq, including, the Times reports, "a proposal to paint a US surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein."

Reminiscent of the Downing Street Memo's famous line, David Manning, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser at the time, writes, "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,"

Bush's mendacity in taking America into this illegal, unprovoked catastrophe is already well known.