This is definitely pretty big news. A leading figure in the neoconservative ideology now opposes the war in Iraq and says neoconservatism should be abandoned entirely, like Leninism. We at USTV have long been warning people of the dangerous parallels between the Neo-Con (artists) and philosophies of Trotskyism and Leninism. These Busheviks are really more “Market-Leninists” than anything else.

Its really no surprise to learn upon closer inspection the fact that many of these Neo-Cons used to follow the dictates of Trotsky, and came out of the school of ‘permanent revolution’ on the left, only to gravitate over the years to the better paying gig of operating out of the right. (One of these is Irving Kristol, father of Neo-Con artist William Kristol, who helped create the Project for the New American Century with the now criminally indicted Scooter Libby back in the early 90’s).

In an extract from his forthcoming book, America at the Crossroads, Mr Fukuyama declares that the doctrine “is now in shambles” and that its failure has demonstrated “the danger of good intentions carried to extremes”.

In its narrowest form, neoconservatism advocates the use of military force, unilaterally if necessary, to replace autocratic regimes with democratic ones.

Mr Fukuyama once supported regime change in Iraq and was a signatory to a 1998 letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to the then president, Bill Clinton, urging the US to step up its efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. It was also signed by neoconservative intellectuals, such as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and political figures Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the current defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

However, Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Great. NOW he gets it. Read the essay from the “history is over” brainiac Frances Fukuyama. Quite the mea culpa, but one without actually taking on the responsibility for the bloodletting that this ideologue’s philosophies have triggered. History is not over, Mr. Fukuyama, and it will not treat you very kindly, I’m afraid. You’re a day late and a dollar short in your attempts to explain and escape the painful realizations that you are in fact on the wrong end of the truth, and our nation will take a generation at the minimum to clean up after the horrendous mess you have helped make of the world.

Stars & Stripes
Letters to the Editor
November 28, 2005

War Based on a Lie

Weapons of mass destruction? I’m still looking for them, and if you find any give me a call so we can justify our presence in Iraq. We started the war based on a lie, and we’ll finish it based on a lie. I say this because I am currently serving with a logistics headquarters in the Anbar province, between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. I am not fooled by the constant fabrication of “democracy” and “freedom” touted by our leadership at home and overseas.

This deception is furthered by our armed forces’ belief that we can just enter ancient Mesopotamia and tell the locals about the benefits of a legislative assembly. While our European ancestors were hanging from trees, these ancient people were writing algebra and solving quadratic equations. Now we feel compelled to strong-arm them into accepting the spoils of capitalism and “laissez-faire” society. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching Britney Spears on MTV and driving to McDonald’s, but do you honestly believe that Sunnis, Shias and Kurds want our Western ideas of entertainment and freedom imposed on them? Think again.

I’m not being negative, I’m being realistic. The reality in Iraq is that the United States created a nightmare situation where one didn’t exist. Yes, Saddam Hussein was an evil man who lied, cheated and pillaged his own nation. But how was he different from dictators in Africa who commit massive crimes again humanity with little repercussion and sometimes support from the West? The bottom line up front (BLUF to use a military acronym) is that Saddam was different because we used him as an excuse to go to war to make Americans “feel good” about the “War on Terrorism.” The BLUF is that our ultimate goal in 2003 was the security of Israel and the lucrative oil fields in northern and southern Iraq.

Weapons of mass destruction? Call me when you find them. In the meantime, “bring ‘em on” so we can get our “mission accomplished” and get out of this mess.

Capt. Jeff Pirozzi
Camp Taqaddum, Iraq

Download November 28th, 2005 Edition of ‘Stars & Stripes’(Page 12)

Remember this golden moldie?

Testimony by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of Iraq policy, before a House subcommittee on Feb. 28, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, illustrated the optimistic view the administration had of postwar Iraq.

He said containment of Hussein the previous 12 years had cost “slightly over $30 billion,” adding, “I can’t imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years.”

As of May of 2005, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Congress has approved $208 billion for the war in Iraq since 2003.

Of course, we know this is simply the initial down payment, a drop in the bucket (of blood), to what the real, and generational long term costs will be for this monumental foreign policy blunder by what is possibly the most incompetent and mendacious administration in American history.

And now this hack who has proven himself so adept at financial planning is head of the World Bank?

Of course, this is from the same cabal of people that accused Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki of being ‘wildly off the mark’ when he told Congress in 2002 that the United States would need at least several hundred thousand troops in Iraq for multiple numbers of years in order to secure the country and provide for its proper reconstruction after the war. For his accurate and informed assessment, Gen. Shinseki was rewarded with forced early retirement by an administration that had not the time nor interest in living in what was scoffed at by a senior Bush administration official as being part of ‘the reality-based world’ (as quoted by Ron Suskind of the New York Times).

Many Americans could see this coming and warned quite explicitly about these being the effects and results of an action in Iraq. They were, if you will recall, shouted down and shut up (or taken off the air) for being ‘liberals’, ‘un-American’, ‘not supporting the troops’, ‘unpatriotic’, and even being accused of being ‘traitors’ and engaging in ‘treason’.

Now with the nauseating drama being played out in regards to such actions as the outing of CIA agents for partisan political gain, to say nothing of the pursuit of ruinous military policies to secure profit for private gain, it begs the obvious question as to who are indeed the true patriots and who are the real traitors.

Long live the American Revolution and all revolutions dedicated to slaying empires, not creating them.

So much for Paul Wolfowitz’s prognosis that it would all cost around 1 to 2 billion, and be paid for by Iraqi oil revenues. But then, that kind of accounting acumen earns one the chairmanship of the World Bank, if not a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Last week, at the annual meeting of the American Economic Assn., we presented a new estimate for the likely cost of the war in Iraq. We suggested that the final bill will be much higher than previously reckoned - between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, depending primarily on how much longer our troops stay. Putting that into perspective, the highest-grossing movie of all time, “Titanic,” earned $1.8 billion worldwide - about half the cost the U.S. incurs in Iraq every week.

Like the iceberg that hit the Titanic, the full costs of the war are still largely hidden below the surface. Our calculations include not just the money for combat operations but also the costs the government will have to pay for years to come. These include lifetime healthcare and disability benefits for returning veterans and special round-the-clock medical attention for many of the 16,300 Americans who already have been seriously wounded. We also count the increased cost of replacing military hardware because the war is using up equipment at three to five times the peacetime rate. In addition, the military must pay large reenlistment bonuses and offer higher benefits to reenlist reluctant soldiers. On top of this, because we finance the war by borrowing more money (mostly from abroad), there is a rising interest cost on the extra debt.

Read The Article

This is right out of the playbook. Create artificial and specious grounds of provocation to ‘justify’ the need for an attack in ’self-defense’.

White House Meeting Memo, 31 January 2003, as seen by Channel 4 News - and detailed in ‘Lawless World’ by Philippe Sands.

President Bush to Tony Blair: “The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach”

Anyone who has seen the USTV programs on the politicization of intelligence and on propaganda, including the featuring of the Nazi film “Campaign In Poland”, will find this kind of thing to be disturbingly familiar. America is re pleat with its own examples, however. One need not forage into Nazi history to find fake wars being started to fuel empire and the military industrial complex. The battleship Maine (Spanish-American War) and Gulf of Tonkin (Vietnam) are two of the more obvious examples. SSDD.

The Guardian U.K. reports on this story as well…

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.

“The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning”, the president told Mr Blair. The prime minister is said to have raised no objection. He is quoted as saying he was “solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam”.

Read The Guardian article

Good question. James Carroll poses some good points in The Boston Globe.

Here is the embarrassing question: Is America actually at war? We have a war president, war hawks, war planes, war correspondents, war cries, even war crimes - but do we have war? We have war dead, but the question remains. With young US soldiers being blown up almost daily, it can seem an absurd question, an offensive one. With thousands of Iraqis killed by American firepower, it can seem a heartless question, as if the dead care whether strict definitions of “war” are fulfilled. There can be no question that Iraq is in a state of war, and that, whatever its elements of post-Saddam sectarian conflict, the warfare is being driven from the Pentagon.

But, regarding the Iraq conflict as it involves the United States, something essential is lacking that would make it a war - and that is an enemy.

The so-called “insurgents,” who wreak such havoc, are not America’s enemy. They are not our rivals for territory. They are not our ideological antagonists. Abstracting from the present confrontation, they have no reason to wish us ill.

Read the full article here.

Why We Must Leave Iraq
By Larry C. Johnson
Davidcorn.com
August 25th, 2005

Sometimes in life there are no good options. It is part of our nature to always assume that we can fix a problem. But in life there are many problems or situations where there is no pleasant solution. If you were at the Windows on the World Restaurant in the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 9 am on September 11, 2001 you had no good options. You could choose to jump or to burn to death. Some choice.
A hard, clear-eyed look at the current situation in Iraq reveals that we are confronted with equally bad choices. If we stay we are facilitating the creation of an Islamic state that will be a client of Iran. If we pull out we are likely to leave the various ethnic groups of Iraq to escalate the civil war already underway. In my judgment we have no alternative but to pull our forces out of Iraq. Like it or not, such a move will be viewed as a defeat of the United States and will create some very serious foreign policy and security problems for us for years to come. However, we are unwilling to make the sacrifices required to achieve something approximating victory. And, what would victory look like? At a minimum we should expect a secular society where the average Iraqi can move around the country without fear of being killed or kidnapped. That is not the case nor is it on the horizon.

We may even be past the point of no return where we could impose changes that would put Iraq back on course to be a secular, democratic nation without sparking a major Shiite counteroffensive. Therefore the time has come to minimize further unnecessary loss of life by our troops and re-craft a new foreign and security policy for the Middle East.

The Current Situation

Iraq has devolved into a tripartite state, split among the Kurds in the North, the Shias in the South, and Sunni tribes in the middle. While things are relatively peaceful in the North and South, the central part of Iraq is in the grips of a defacto civil war. Most of the trained and deployed Iraqi police and military forces are Shia. Most of their operations are directed against Sunni targets. The Sunnis do not feel that they have a legitimate voice in the political process. As a result they have decided to fight.

The Shia majority, long oppressed in Iraq, are not willing, nor likely, to relinquish their new status as the tops dogs. They are receiving significant intelligence, economic, and political support from the Islamist government in Iran. The Shia also are well positioned to control a significant portion of Iraq’s vast oil resources. They are not likely to share this wealth with the Sunnis.

There is no effective national government in Iraq. The current group meeting inside the Green Zone to draft the constitution has no real clout. True power is held by tribal chieftains and religious leaders scattered around country. Those leaders are playing both sides of the fence - keeping a toe in the political negotiations in Baghdad while providing money and protection to insurgents.

The insurgency in Iraq is comprised of at least 20 groups. Some of these are Baathists, some are Sunni Islamic extremists, and a few are Shia. They agree on one thing - the United States is an invader and must be expelled. While there is no single leader who can claim the status or mandate as did Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam days, the insurgents in Iraq are as firm and serious as those we faced in Vietnam.

The continued presence of US combat forces and our operations against Iraqi civilians is recruiting new jihadists from around the Muslim world. Notwithstanding US efforts to win the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people, the sectarian strife and the images of US soldiers kicking in the doors of peoples’ homes while searching for insurgents is creating more anger rather than support.

The Sunni insurgents have control of the battlefield in the central belt of Iraq. Even today the United States military cannot keep a six mile stretch of highway open that runs from downtown Baghdad to the International Airport. US diplomatic personnel and many key Iraqi Government officials live inside a security ghetto known euphemistically as the Green Zone. Even during the bleakest days of the war in South Vietnam, US diplomats and soldiers could travel freely around Saigon without fear of being killed in bomb blast or kidnapped. We don’t have that luxury in Baghdad.

Options?

We could potentially defeat the Sunni insurgents if we were willing and able to deploy sufficient troops to control the key infiltration routes that run along the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys. But we are neither willing nor able. It would require at least 380,000 troops devoted exclusively to that mission. Part of that mission would entail killing anyone who moved into controlled areas, such as roadways. In adopting those kinds of rules of engagement we would certainly increase the risk of killing innocent civilians. But, we would impose effective control over those routes. That is a prerequisite to gaining control over the insurgency.

We cannot meet the increased manpower requirements in Iraq without a draft. We do not currently have enough troops in the Army and the Marine Corps to supply and sustain that size of force in the field. But, even with a draft, we would be at least 15 months away from having the new batch of trained soldiers ready to deploy. More importantly, there is no political support for a draft. In other words, we’re unwilling to do what is required to even have a shot at winning.

While the insurgency is not likely to acquire sufficient strength to fight and defeat our forces directly in large set piece battles, they do have the wherewithal to destroy infrastructure and challenge our control of lines of communication. The ultimate test of a government’s legitimacy is whether or not it can protect its citizens from threats foreign and domestic. Thus far the Iraqi Government has made scant progress on this front. Today’s attack in central Baghdad, by a uniformed unit of masked insurgents, represents another disturbing milestone in the continued growth of the insurgency. One of these days we should not be surprised when an insurgent force breaches the Green Zone and takes some US diplomats hostage.

An ideal, but unlikely outcome, is that the secularists, who are trying desperately to craft a legitimate government, will persuade a sufficient number of Shia and Sunni leaders to turn their back on a religious-based government. Unfortunately, they don’t control weapons or militia. Force remains the ultimate means for deciding a country’s fate. In this case the guns are in the hands of those who favor an Islamic state over a secular nation.

If the United States tries to intervene now to compel power sharing on behalf of Sunni interests we are likely to trigger a backlash by the Shia majority. Mullahs like Moqtada al Sadr have demonstrated that they can mobilize combat units to kill Americans when their interests are challenged.

There are some indications that once we are out of the picture that the insurgency will turn on itself. As noted earlier a significant portion of the insurgents are not Islamic extremists. There is evidence that the different groups will fight each other. Sunni tribal chiefs are not likely to cede control of their territory to foreign Islamists once the United States is no longer on the scene. Our departure will likely lead to a brutal civil war, but such a war creates opportunities for the United States where it can rebuild its credibility with those forces who represent modernity and secular progress.

So What’s Next?

Staying the course and enduring further casualties while the insurgency grows stronger is an insane policy. If we persist on that front we will end up strengthening the hand of Islamic extremists and their role within the Iraqi insurgency.

Our choice is simple - either we invest in the military resources and personnel required to defeat the Sunni insurgents and allow the Shia and Kurds to consolidate power or we withdraw and let the Shia, Sunni, and Kurds find their own solution. We cannot ask our soldiers and Marines to give their lives and sacrifice their bodies for a new Islamic state. It is true that our withdrawal will create a major vacuum and damage our prestige. But the alternative, i.e., that we stay and try to train up sufficient Iraqi forces and help the fledgling Islamic Government get on its feet, will leave us the favorite target of insurgents and terrorists. And after we have shed the blood of our sons and daughters in trying to create a new government that will be controlled by Islamists, those Islamists will ultimately insist that we leave Iraq and no longer meddle in their affairs.

Rosy scenario does not live in Iraq. Until we come to grips with this truth American soldiers will continue to be killed and maimed for no good reason.

—————————————–

Larry C. Johnson is a former Deputy Director of the US State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, who has spoken out for censure of Bush. Earlier, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and is an expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security and crisis and risk management. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international firm that helps multinational corporations and financial institutions identify strategic opportunities, manage risks, and counter threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. He is a Republican who supported and raised funds for George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Look In The Mirror, Mr. President
By Doug Bandow
Salon.com

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. A former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, he served as a special assistant to President Reagan.

A Reaganite Republican says Bush should apologize for his grievous failures on Iraq.

July 28, 2005 | In the wake of the London bombings, President Bush continues his attempts to rally public support for his policies in Iraq. Instead, he should apologize to Americans for those policies.
Republicans have been demanding a lot of apologies from Democrats recently. On “Meet the Press” on July 17, Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said Democrats should apologize to Karl Rove for their “smear campaign” against him. Republicans also pushed Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., to recant his ill-considered comparison of Guannamo jailers to Nazis. And the GOP demanded that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean repent of his virulent attacks on Republicans. But it is the Republican president who has the most to apologize for.

Not that the Democrats don’t have anything to apologize for. I started my career in Washington working for Ronald Reagan and would happily do the same again. But for reasons that I offered in a column in Salon last fall (which subsequently was featured in a “Doonesbury” cartoon), the current president is no conservative, at least as that philosophy has traditionally been understood. His grievous failures dramatically overshadow those of his political adversaries.

President Bush took the United States into war based on a falsehood. His appointees talked about mushroom clouds, Iraq’s stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and unmanned aerial vehicles that could hit America.

Vice President Cheney claimed that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11. Various administration officials, from the president on down, declared that the Saddam regime was a “threat,” a “significant threat,” the “most dangerous threat of our time,” a “threat to the region and the world,” a “threat to the security of free nations,” a “serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies,” a “unique and urgent threat” and a “serious and mounting threat.”

None of these claims was true. Bush and his appointees had ample reason for doubt. Indeed, as John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman of the New Republic pointed out, “Unbeknownst to the public, the administration faced equally serious opposition within its own intelligence agencies.” The CIA, the State Department’s intelligence bureau, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Energy, the Air Force and the International Atomic Energy Agency all disputed particular administration claims.

If the president’s insistence on believing what he wanted to believe had only cost America $200 billion, it would be bad enough. But more than 1,750 servicemen and women have been killed, nearly 14,000 have been wounded (many of them maimed), and Iraq, as even President Bush admits, has become a vortex of international terrorism. The president should apologize.

Read the full essay here…
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/08/01/bush_apology/print.html

Hagel Sounds Alarm Over Iraq
By Jake Thompson
Omaha World-Herald

June 26th, 2005

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. - More than 200 Nebraska American Legion members, who have seen war and conflict themselves, fell quiet here Saturday as Sen. Chuck Hagel bluntly explained why he believes that the United States is losing the war in Iraq.
Sen. Chuck Hagel addresses more than 200 Nebraska American Legion members in Grand Island on Saturday.

It took 20 minutes, but it boiled down to this:

The Bush team sent in too few troops to fight the war leading to today’s chaos and rising deaths of Americans and Iraqis. Terrorists are “pouring in” to Iraq.

Basic living standards are worse than a year ago in Iraq. Civil war is perilously close to erupting there. Allies aren’t helping much. The American public is losing its trust in President Bush’s handling of the conflict.

And Hagel’s deep fear is that it will all plunge into another Vietnam debacle, prompting Congress to force another abrupt pullout as it did in 1975.

“What we don’t want to happen is for this to end up another Vietnam,” Hagel told the legionnaires, “because the consequences would be catastrophic.”

It would be far worse than Vietnam, says Hagel, a twice-wounded veteran of that conflict, which killed 58,000 Americans.

Failure in Iraq could lead to many more American deaths, disrupt U.S. oil supplies, damage the Middle East peace effort, spread terrorism and harm America’s stature worldwide, Hagel said.

That’s what keeps him on edge these days.

That’s why he is again the most outspoken Republican in Congress about Iraq. His view that America is losing in Iraq, which first aired in a newsmagazine last week, prompted rebukes from conservatives such as talk show host Rush Limbaugh, concerns from others in his party and praise from anti-war advocates on the Internet.

But Saturday, he was unrepentant.

“The point is, we’re going to have to make some changes or we will lose, we will lose in Iraq,” he told the legionnaires.

At the same time, he said, he wants President Bush to win, and he believes that the United States cannot pull out anytime soon.

The legionnaires gave him a standing ovation at the end of his speech. Carl Marks of Omaha, a Korean War veteran, said: “It sounds like he’s conflicted . . . like a lot of us.”

Bennie Navratil of Hallam, Neb., whose son left last week for military duty in Afghanistan, said, “I feel he said the right thing: that we can’t pull out and something’s got to change.”

Aboard a plane back to Omaha, Hagel was asked whether he thought Bush was aware that adjustments might be needed in his Iraq policy.

“I don’t know,” Hagel said.

The whole Iraqi situation makes him sick to his stomach, he said.

“It has tormented me, torn me more than any one thing,” he said with a grim look on his face. “To see what these guys in Iraq are having to go through and knowing what I know here: that we didn’t prepare for it, we didn’t understand what we were getting into. And to put those guys in those positions, it makes me so angry.”

He lays part of the blame on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who argued before the war that he needed only 150,000 American troops in Iraq. That caused more casualties than were needed, Hagel said.

“We still don’t have enough troops,” he said. “We should have had double or triple the number.”

It has led to a bleak situation, Hagel said:

Insurgent attacks are more frequent than a year ago. Bombs used by insurgents are growing more deadly, piercing America’s best protective clothing and equipment. Oil production is down. Electricity is less available than a year ago. Economic development is lagging. Ninety percent of the humanitarian and economic aid pledged by 60 nations hasn’t reached Iraq because of the continuing violence. Only one Middle Eastern country has an ambassador in Iraq.

Bush has said America is fighting in Iraq with a “coalition of the willing,” allies who have committed a relatively small number of troops and aid.

Hagel scoffed at that idea. “It’s a joke to say there’s a coalition of the willing,” he said, adding that many are pulling out and the United States is fronting the bills for those who remain.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops are under severe strain. Troops are stationed in more than 100 countries, and their rapid tempo of deployments with little time off leaves them fatigued and in danger of making mistakes.

“We are destroying the finest military in the history of mankind, and the (National) Guard, too,” he said. “We’re stretching our Army to the breaking point.”

Public pronouncements from the Bush administration also have gotten under Hagel’s skin. Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent comments that the insurgents in Iraq are in “the last throes” echo a refrain of the Vietnam era, he said.

Back then, officials saw “the light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam, Hagel said.

Toting up all those points, he said, leads him to conclude that the United States is losing in Iraq.

“That doesn’t mean we have to lose,” he said.

In his speech and in an interview, Hagel offered some ideas that he thinks could help in Iraq:

U.S. troops and others could work harder to train local militias in small Iraqi towns to help identify and take on insurgents. Allies who don’t want to enter Iraq could help patrol its borders, blocking terrorists from entering the war-torn country. The training of Iraq’s military and military police should be accelerated immediately.

Middle Eastern nations should become more engaged, he said, but it doesn’t help when administration officials criticize Egypt and Saudi Arabia for not moving quickly enough toward democratic practices.

Hagel said he shaped his views after many talks recently with senior U.S. military officials; foreign policy experts; Brent Scowcroft, who was the first President Bush’s national security adviser; and others. He plans to share his views with the current president and his team and says he feels an urgency he hopes they will share.

The United States has only about six more months to begin to turn things around in Iraq, he said.

“I believe that there can be a good outcome in Iraq,” he said. “I also believe there could be a very bad outcome for Iraq. I believe we have a very limited time for that good outcome.”

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

The Secret Downing Street Memo
The Sunday Times UK
May 1st, 2005

By Matthew Rycroft
(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)

Secret and Strictly Personal - UK Eyes Only

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.
John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam’s regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad US options were:

* (a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).
* (b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:

* (i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.
* (ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.
* (iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun “spikes of activity” to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

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.

Read the complete article here…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html