You always go back to those old quotes of the 1990s but never acknowledge the facts in the Downing Street memo.
The 'Downing Street Memo' is more hearsay than fact.....another accusation that is denied.....so I give it the weight it deserves...The memo doesn't even have an author.
Undeniable quotes over a period of years carry a lot more weight and tell me what these people BELIEVED at the time...thats an important distinction....
A refresher...
The "
Downing Street memo" (or the "
Downing Street Minutes"), sometimes described by critics of the
Iraq War as the "
smoking gun memo", is the note of a 23 July 2002 secret meeting[SUP]
[1][/SUP][SUP]
[2][/SUP] of senior British government, defence and intelligence figures discussing the build-up to the war, which included direct reference to classified
United States policy of the time. The name refers to
10 Downing Street, the residence of the
British prime minister.
The memo recorded the head of the
Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) as expressing the view following his recent visit to Washington that "
[George W.] Bush wanted to remove
Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
It quoted
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as saying it was clear that Bush had "made up his mind" to take military action but that "the case was thin."
Straw also noted that Iraq retained "WMD capability" and that "Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN."
The military asked about the consequences "if Saddam used WMD on day one," posing Kuwait or Israel as potential targets.
Attorney-General
Lord Goldsmith warned that justifying the invasion on legal grounds would be difficult.
However, the meeting took place several months before the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, the resolution eventually used as the legal basis for the invasion of Iraq. UNR687 also provided a pre-existing basis, as it required Iraq to divest itself of "100%" of all WMD capacity, which the Memo agreed it had not.
A copy of the memo was obtained by British journalist
Michael Smith and published in the
The Sunday Times in May 2005, on the eve of British elections. Smith stated that the memo was equivalent to the
Pentagon Papers which exposed American intentions in the
Vietnam War and alleged the American media did not report more about it due to a perceived bias towards support for the war.[SUP]
[3][/SUP] Though its authenticity has never been seriously challenged,
the British and American governments have stated that the contents do not accurately reflect their official policy positions at the time.