Avedon writes, in relation to this post:
I think it’s a bit sad that John Cole is still willing to buy into the right-blogosphere’s reinterpretation of this thing. It’s as if the word “political” in the document is invisible to them, or is a synonym for “military”.
I don’t get what I am buying into. Correct me if I am wrong or what I am missing:
The Downing Street Memo is one person’s interpretations of his meetings with several people. Other memos are now being released that don;t paint the same picture, including the one Sanger wrote about
The military absolutely had plans for invading Iraq well before 9/11, and they were updated afterwards.
Bush, after 9/11, asked people to clear Iraq from guilt, and then invaded Afghanistan. As part of a larger stream of thinking, the belief was that something had to be done about Iraq, the Middle East in general, and that Hussein had WMD and was a legitimate target of opportunity.
Bush felt the UN was a lost cause on the issue of Iraq, and while he publicly stated he was going to do everything he could to engage them and avoid war, he believed that wasn’t going to turn out.
The real crime is that it appears that there really was inadequate post-war planning prior to going to war in Iraq.
And, as a general principle, military decisions are political, as use of military force is the extreme end of politics by force.
What am I mixing up here? Why am I wrong to not be all up in arms about the Downing Street memos…
Rick
John,
Because you’re not hewing to the latest, party-line enthusiasm. Mere details have nothing whatever to do about it. You’re very good on the Christer stuff, but off the reservation on this one.
Cordially…
P.S. One comment or anecodote I read last night made an excellent point that hadn’t occurred to me, in spite of loving language play and accents, etc. “Fixing” in UK/Queens English has no smell, as it does in the U.S. Like the Chicago Black Sox fixing the 1919 world series. The Brits use it more for “fixing in place.” Pinning something down. Discuss.
mac Buckets
Anyone who has ever dealt with the British should know that “fixing the intel around a policy” has no overtly nefarious meaning — Americans would just use the word “frame” instead of “fix,” I think. I find it hilarious that these moonbats think that British government officials are naturally speaking in the vernacular of Brooklyn hoods “fixing” a fight.
ppgaz
If I were a blogsite operator, I’d lay low on this story. The story is going to have a life of its own, whether it be short and minor, or long and major. You might say, it is out of scope.
Much too early to start icing the champagne and putting on the party hats, no matter which side you are on.
Besides, we have to wait for the full and complete parsing of what “is” is from the neocon apologists.
“I never had sex with that intelligence.” You get the idea.
John S
mac Buckets, and the ever-cordial Rick,
You don’t have to be a “moonbat” (can we stop with the wingnut/moonbat thing already?) or ascribe sinister overtones to British colloquialisms to have concern about intelligence being fixed, framed, pinned, what have you, around a policy.
Can you not see the objection that perhaps intelligence should inform policy, rather than the other way round?
mac Buckets
Can you not see the objection that perhaps intelligence should inform policy, rather than the other way round?
I guess I fail to see why Bush would feel the need to be concerned with “fixing/framing” intel around policy at a time when the 9 major international intelligence agencies were saying the same thing: Saddam has WMD. The intel wasn’t “broken,” for Bush’s purposes. Why “fix” it?
Also, if I’m supposed to believe that Bush constructed this war, that he ordered forged intel on weapons to justify the attack, that he was so evil and cruel and manipulative as to send young men where some of them would certainly die for personal/partisan reasons…then you’re going to have to explain why he didn’t do the EASIEST, and yet most important, part of the evil job by planting some WMD in Iraq.
Steven
I agree with you. The memos are politically embarrassing, but the Ds are still fighting against the act of the war itself. That argument ended with the invasion. They lost. Move on. From that day, the fight should have been about the utter incompetence shown by the Bush administration in conducting the aftermath of the Iraq campaign. But for whatever reason, the Ds can’t stay on that message. It has hurt the country and it has certainly hurt the effort in Iraq. The Ds are still trying to score rhetorical points and are not attempting in any meaningful way to make the case that the aftermath in Iraq was poorly conceived and poorly executed and that the group that led the country into this war had no effective game plan for how to end it. This is why the Ds lost the election and why they will continue to lose on the Iraq issue.
Rick
John,
The point–and it may actually be wrong, but I brought it up–was that in British vernacular, fixing intelligence means nailing it down. Getting it straight, etc.
The intelligence, domestic and foreign, was that Iraq had tons of WMD unaccounted for per the conditions of the 1991 cease fire agreement. So the policy was “fixed, framed, pinned, what have you” around the intel.
Actually, the sinister overtone, if this semantic matter has purchase, is only on the Yankee side. That is, “fixing” is a common, negative slang term here, but not (or rarely) across the pond.
Cordially…
neil
I think the reason you’re not all up in arms about the Downing Street memo is because you already knew that Bush had decided on war regardless of the facts on the ground, and that you’re okay with that. You are to be commended for your clear sight, I suppose.
The real problem that the Downing Street memo points to is that the Bushies had a year and a half in between deciding to go to war and actually going. And what did they do in between? Diplomacy? Work on the post-war planning? No. Exploiting the war politically to win the election in 2002 and then 2004? Bingo.
They put their political advantage above the security of our country and the safety of our soldiers and this memo proves it.
John S
mac buckets,
I don’t recall claiming Bush was evil, or that he ordered forged intelligence.
Speaking for myself, I object to the WMD angle being advanced as the cause for war, when it’s apparent that it was seized upon as a marketing tactic to “sell” the war to the public.
Notice nothing in my comment about “Chimpy Bushitler”, “he tried to kill my daddy,” or “it’s all about oil.” For all I know, this war could have been fought as an honest humanitarian intervention or a democracy-promoting domino effect. I just think more candor would have been called for.
John S
Rick,
I do understand your point about “fixing,” and mine is that it’s not necessary to use the Brooklyn translation of the British term to be bothered by it.
Do you believe that the decision to go to war was based on the missing WMD per the 1991 agreement? I don’t, and I think it’s apparent that it was a convenient justification for a course of action already decided. That’s what bugs me about it.
neil
I see, Rick. Thank you for your lesson in comparative linguistics. Let’s apply it to a few primary sources from our friends across the pond, shall we?
In The Guardian, we find this article: Monsanto accused of price-fixing. An American reader might think that Monsanto was being accused of collaborating with its competitors to set prices at a level above fair market value; but in fact, they were merely trying to -clarify- prices. No negative connotation to ‘fixing’ there.
Moving on to The Independent, we find that Filipino President was ‘recorded fixing election’. A biased American reader would assume that the Filipino president was trying to rig the election, but in fact, he was simply trying to count the votes and find out who won.
Lastly, in sport, the Times of London writes that Match-fixing fears grow. Again, the naive American might think that this is about conspiring to arrange a sporting match to produce a desired outcome, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The story is actually about improving football officiating so that people would have more confidence in the results.
I swear, don’t those lefties ever check their facts before they go telling everyone about how the Brits speak English?
Jon H
Rick writes: “The point–and it may actually be wrong, but I brought it up–was that in British vernacular, fixing intelligence means nailing it down. Getting it straight, etc.”
The implication is that the intelligence is being *adjusted*. (As in, “fixing your tie” means to adjust the knot and such until it’s correct.)
And, the memo states, it was being adjusted to suit the policy. Which means that intelligence that did not suit the policy was being ignored or discarded, in favor of intelligence that did suit the policy. As we know now, the intelligence that did suit the policy was really poor intelligence.
Whether or not one takes “fix” as if it’s being used as in “fixing a fight”, in context it is clear that it is being used to indicate that the intelligence is being adjusted to the policy.
Rick
Neil,
Nice, speedy investigative work, which is why I hedged on making sweeping conclusions. But there remains the ample room to question which sense “fixed” was used.
Do you believe that the decision to go to war was based on the missing WMD per the 1991 agreement?
John,
Only in part. Another was the “quamire” of sanctions (see what we now know), and Saddam’s chronic violations of the cease fire, or armistice, if you will.
Still another part–the one I approve of most–was a greater shift onto a sustained offensive against practicioners and abettors of terrorism. I’m guessing it’s sustainingly offensive to you as well, but there you are.
Unlike the always wrong Arabists thoughout the striped-pants world, I thought the ME’s stability needed a “jolly good” shake up, to borrow from your trans-Atlantic cousins.
Cordially…
Jon H
And, I’d add, that if the intelligence needed “fixing” to support the policy, that suggests that the intelligence did *not* support the policy as-is.
Which means that, whether or not at some level various nations believed that Iraq “had WMD”, the intelligence did not support the contention that it was in a usable form, that it was being actively pursued, that it made Iraq any kind of a threat necessitating military action.
Solid intelligence was needed to prove that Iraq’s armament was in a state that made it a threat. Such intelligence was not available, so it had to be made up or provided by Chalabi’s flunkies (whether they be Iraqi refugees, members of the AEI, or Judith Miller of the Times).
Jon H
“Still another part–the one I approve of most–was a greater shift onto a sustained offensive against practicioners and abettors of terrorism”
You mean like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?
When did that happen? On my planet, we only went against a crapped-out dictator called Saddam Hussein, who had only the lamest connections to terrorism.
We even declined to take out an actual terrorist in Iraq (who went on to cause us no end of trouble) and played footsie with terrorists who attached US citizens in Iran in the 70s.
That’s my planet. Where are you?
John S
Rick,
There’s nothing offensive to me about active military pursuit of practitioners and abettors of terrorism (see: Afghanistan). This justification doesn’t hold water in Saddam’s case, though, as his regime was tangential, at most, to the Al Qaeda cause.
I thought the ME’s stability needed a “jolly good” shake up
And quite a bloody shake-up it was (I mean bloody in the American sense). Not sure it turned out for the better, though. Perhaps it would have been more clever to shake the Middle East by the end where the terrorists actually were (meaning Saudi, Pakistan, etc – not a veiled reference to Israel, of all places).
John S
Rick,
There’s nothing offensive to me about active military pursuit of practitioners and abettors of terrorism (see: Afghanistan). This justification doesn’t hold water in Saddam’s case, though, as his regime was tangential, at most, to the Al Qaeda cause.
I thought the ME’s stability needed a “jolly good” shake up
And quite a bloody shake-up it was (I mean bloody in the American sense). Not sure it turned out for the better, though. Perhaps it would have been more clever to shake the Middle East by the end where the terrorists actually were (meaning Saudi, Pakistan, etc – not a veiled reference to Israel, of all places).
p.lukasiak
Correct me if I am wrong or what I am missing:
okay….
The Downing Street Memo is one person’s interpretations of his meetings with several people. Other memos are now being released that don;t paint the same picture, including the one Sanger wrote about
geez, you even start out wrong. Its not “the Downing Street memo”, in fact its the “Downing Street Minute” — the document in question is the official version of what took place at the meeting, and would have been circulated to all those who attended that meeting (giving them the opportunity to correct the “minutes” of the meeting.)
Now that you have clue #1 about why you happen to be dead wrong about this, perhaps you will reconsider Avedon’s critique…
Bush, after 9/11, asked people to clear Iraq from guilt, and then invaded Afghanistan.
That’s wrong as well. Bush never asked anyone to “clear” Iraq — he was seeking information connecting Iraq to 9-11 to find an excuse to invade Iraq as the initial response to 9-11. Please get your facts straight.
As part of a larger stream of thinking, the belief was that something had to be done about Iraq, the Middle East in general, and that Hussein had WMD and was a legitimate target of opportunity.
This is semi-true. See “blood for oil” if you want to understand what the “larger stream of thinking” was all about. Virtually no one, beside the neo-cons in the Bush regime, thought that Saddam Hussein represented a priority in the middle east — do yourself a favor and read all the memos, and see how even Britain understood that advancing the “MEPP” (Middle East Peace Plan” betweeen Israel and the Palestinians) was the single most important issue in the ME. Also read all the memos and recognise that Saddam was not considered a significant threat at that time by our primary ally. Finally, everyone assumed that Saddam had WMDs, but even British intelligence acknowledged that the “knowledge” that Saddam had WMDs was “thinly sourced.”
Bush felt the UN was a lost cause on the issue of Iraq, and while he publicly stated he was going to do everything he could to engage them and avoid war, he believed that wasn’t going to turn out.
If you read all the memos, its obvious that Bush was completely unconcerned with what the UN did — it wasn’t a question of a lost cause, but an issue of complete disregard for the potential effectiveness of the UN to be the means by which Saddam could be “disarmed” of the WMDs that “everyone assumed” he had. Because it was clearly illegal for Britain to participate or support the US in any fashion absent UN permission, it is now obvious that the only reason Bush went the UN route was to make it possible for Britain to be part of the team — and its equally clear that the reason Blair went to the UN was to find a way to “wrongfoot Saddam” — not to find a peaceful means of disarming him. (Blair and Bush have both consistently lied on this point.)
The real crime is that it appears that there really was inadequate post-war planning prior to going to war in Iraq.
wrong again. The real crime is that everyone knew that the intelligence on Saddam’s WMDs was “thinly sourced”, and that the IAEA had proven that all of the intelligence about Saddam’s supposed nuclear program was bullshit, and that UNMOVIC had proven that the “best intelligence” about where WMDs were being produced and stored was complete bullshit.
The CRIME was in going to war, knowing full well that literally every accusation about Saddam’s WMDs that had been checked out had been disproven. The CRIME was in the highly selective use of intelligence information (like the fact that the same guy whose account of Saddam’s WMDs was Bush’s primary source on those programs also said that everything had been destroyed — or the fact that UNMOVIC never suggested that vast quantities of materials that were officially “unaccounted for” actually existed…oh, I could go on and on…) The CRIME was in using support for the Iraq war as a political cudgel, and questioning the patriotism of those who were skeptical of the Bush regime’s march to war.
The CRIME was in relying upon an intelligence bureaucracy that had failed miserably with regard to 9-11 to justify killing tens of thousands of Muslims half-way around the world. The CRIME was going to war without a review of the intelligence on which the war was based when it had already been proven that the intelligence was completely unreliable.
I understand how tough it is to admit that you were bamboozled, and that you were dead wrong for supporting Bushco’s military adventurism in Iraq…..but the fact is that you are desperately trying to spin the facts in a way that justifies what you know deep down was a bad decision.
HH
And of course if the memo were written in the Southern US it would mean “I’m fixing to go to the store,” or in this case, “I’m fixing to gather up evidence against Iraq.”
Rick
My dear Johns,
When Dubya spoke to Congress following 9/11, he said:
“Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command — every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war — to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.
This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
Going according to plan. I’m gratified by the Pakistan’s help so far, and the upheaval in the ME status quo, and awaiting the fall or genuine reform of the regimes in Damascus and Tehran. Then, hopefully, Riyadh.
Regarding those three loci of terror support: what nation happens to lie smack in-between?
Bah! Must be a coinky-dink.
Cordially…
Anderson
I was reading over at Poor Man about a mom whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, furiously denouncing Bush for misleading the country into war.
That’s what it’s about, folks. 9/11 or not, if Bush had gone on TV and said “We think Saddam’s a dangerous guy in general, so we’re going to invade and take him out,” then the country wouldn’t have been behind that. Americans on the whole are ignorant (thanks, MSM), but not stupid.
Instead, the administration created the impression that Saddam was nearly about to have nukes, etc. There was indeed a lot of intel on this, just mostly bad intel fed to us by Chalabi etc. and cherry-picked by Dick “Anyone can be a spook” Cheney, Doug Feith, and other mental giants.
Then, when the UN inspectors looked around and said “hey, no weapons,” Cheney et al. viciously denounced them. Why did they do this? Because they wanted the war, they had psyched themselves into it, and they were impervious to evidence.
I don’t think that Bush et al. deliberately lied. I think they foolished deceived themselves into believing that the facts supported their policy. However, I do not think that folly is excusable at that level.
John S
Rick,
You always over-reach with your last “devastating” point. So what if Iraq is between Saudi, Iran and Pakistan?
Switzerland happens to be between Germany, Italy and France. Should D-Day have taken place there instead?
Rick
You keep your eyes on this and that tree. I take in the greater forest.
Balloon-Juice is a big tent.
Cordially…
Bruce Moomaw
Keep in mind, dammit, that:
(1) The “one man” who reached these unambiguous conclusions was the head of MI-6.
(2) The second memo says explicitly not only that the White House was uninterested in giving the UN inspection an chance to destroy Saddam’s biological and chemical WMDs, or disprove their existence — it says explicitly that the the US wasn’t even strongly interested in using the WAR for that purpose, which explains why we didn’t make any serious attempt to guard Saddam’s supposed huge WMD depots from being raided either before or after our invasion (something the CIA was also griping about well in advance of the war — in vain). The Bushites just KNEW that the grateful, flower-strewing Iraqi citizens would guard the WMD depots for us. As Brad Delong keeps saying, thank God Saddam really DIDN’T have any biological/chemical WMDs.
(3) The second memo provides solid proof that the Bushites were willing to trump up the war — by grossly exaggerating the evidence of Saddam’s nuclear program, and by not giving the UN inspection any chance to work — for EXACTLY THE SAME REASON they didn’t bother to plan it or provide adequate resources for it: they were absolutely convinced that it would be a complete “cakewalk” (to quote Kenneth Adelman), that it would be over very quickly and cheaply, and that we could thus afford to delay any actions of any type against the unquestioned nuclear proliferators (Iran, North Korea and Pakistan) until our brief dalliance in Iraq was over with. Now see the consequences: the US military is stuck in Iraq and utterly unable to take military actions — of any possible necessary kind — against the real Nuclear Proliferators.
Grand Moff Texan
Bruce: it would also explain why not a single piece of British or Aussie armor sent to Iraq was outfitted for NBC warfare.
The business about WMDs was purely for domestic consumption.
.
Rick
Hark!!! To I detect a clamor here for military action against the Norks, the Iranians, Syrians, and maybe the Pakistanis and Saudis?
Most interesting. Please sketch out the plan of campaign.
Cordially…
Rick
John S,
Iraq is big, but not *that* big.
Hear about the demonstrations in Iran a couple days ago. They, too, have major Protest Babes. We may be seeing the Seething Persian Street. I hope so.
Cordially…
Halffasthero
Reading thru the posts it looks like both sides made good points. Rick is right, though – this a big tent blog. Limited preaching to the choir compared to most.
Bruce Moomaw
Syria and Saudi Arabia, definitely no. Iran, yes. As for North Korea: since they alrady have the Bomb, we can’t attack them directly — but we would have to use our military to repel them if the Dear Leader ever tears himself away from his collection of Daffy Duck cartoons long enough to invade the South, in the confidence that we can no longer deter him from such an invasion by using nuclear threats. And we will also need enough troops to occupy and pacify the North if Kim’s government ever agrees to give up power peacefully in return for being protecting from being massacred by their own enraged citizens — which is the only way they will ever give up the Bomb, since one of their main purposes for acquiring it is to use it to extort money from their neighbors to stay in power in order to avoid such a massacre. (One Japanese expert says that, in private conversation with diplomats, Kim’s officials talk constantly about the fate of the Ceaucescus.)
As for Pakistan — which scares me more than any other nation on earth right now, including NK — any military actions we ever take in regard to it will have to be highly flexible, since its nuclear dangers lie in the instability of its government and its risk that either that regime will be overthrown by religious fanatics, or that the nation will collapse into civil war in which God knows what could happen to its nuclear arsenal. (The most likely possibility would be an attempt on our part to raid the country and place its likely nuclear depots under our own control.) But — once again — thanks to the geniuses who got us into Iraq, we are utterly powerless to take any military actions of any sort against the three really dangerous nuclear nations. (Nor — thanks to the fact that our resources are being bled into Iraq — are we spending remotely as much as we should on assiting Russsia in guarding its own shaky Bomb depots.)
Jon H
“Hark!!! To I detect a clamor here for military action against the Norks, the Iranians, Syrians, and maybe the Pakistanis and Saudis?”
Not at all. We accept the undesirability of making war on those other countries; we just aren’t foolish enough to think that a bloody useless war is better than none.
Rick
Oh, don’t be so modest–a great many of you are quite foolish enough on a wide range of issues.
Cordially…
John S
Rick,
Iraq is big, but not *that* big.
Hear about the demonstrations in Iran a couple days ago. They, too, have major Protest Babes. We may be seeing the Seething Persian Street. I hope so.
What?
Kimmitt
Why am I wrong to not be all up in arms about the Downing Street memos…
Because you already knew that Bush was lying when he said he hadn’t made up his mind to invade at the time, and you already knew that the Administration was so grossly incompetent as to have done precisely zero planning for the postwar occupation at the time of the invasion.
However, most Americans are not as well-informed as you, so those of us who are against this foolishness are trying to give them the information they need to understand who shit the bed, why they shit the bed, and how the bed continues to be shit, despite how long it’s been.
Jon H
” Other memos are now being released that don;t paint the same picture, including the one Sanger wrote about”
Note the date order of Sanger’s memo.
Sanger’s evidently refers to events and thoughts from before the Brits attended the meetings in Washington.
So you have Sanger’s memo, referring to what the Brits understood Washington’s position to be.
Then the other, minutes memo, which came out in the press first, in which the head of MI-6 reports *after the meeting in Washington* on the *actual* situation in the administration.
I would also argue that it’s not just “one person’s interpretations of some meetings”, rather that person’s *job* was to learn what Washington (read: the White House, Pentagon, etc) was thinking and doing, as Britain’s representation at these meetings with high-level US people.
Jon H
Here’s the delicious irony…
The hawks who dismiss the DSM, dismiss it as just some guy’s opinion, are in fact dismissing the single most solid, well-founded piece of intelligence in the entire awful mess of the Iraq War.
I mean, come on. If ‘C’, the head of MI-6, were to pop up tomorrow with a new memo relating a piece of new third-hand Chalabi-sourced intelligence about mobile biological weapons labs in Iraq, the hawks who dismiss his judgement today would be taking a victory lap and accepting his judgement as unimpeachable.
But today, his first-hand experience of a meeting? Eh. Debatable.