User:Kevin Baas/downing street memo

The DSM Coordination Center is a center for coordinating all things in support of exposing the truth behind the Administration's handling and presentation of pre-war intelligence, and whether the president was determined to go to war with Iraq prior to assessing and regardless of the facts, intelligence, and legality. The goals of this center are to aggregate information, prepare representatives (fight misinformation and propaganda), coordinate actions, and disseminate news.

Antimisinformation • News • Action • Coordinate

The wikipedia page on the memo is here.

Please keep only strong points, from popularly accredited sources. Overburdening weith massive amounts of links to indymedia articles and the like only serves to diffuse and diminish.

And keep things matter-of-fact. No invective, that's also counterproductive.

Upcoming media events/confrontations[edit]

Republican attacks[edit]

PRIMARY ATTACK[edit]

The UN route: as elaborated in the memo, they tried to create the impression of an ultimatum to saddam regarding weapons inspections, and the impression of saddam not cooperating, in order to garner public support for the war and create justification (rationale). this was linked to WMDs. it's all in the memo. notice this interview with blair: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june05/blair_6-07.html

Relevant parts of the memo, for bush-blair defense:

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with 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 neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. 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 Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

'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. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. 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. On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.

John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said 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.