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Bush Pressed for Iraq War Despite Doubtful Intelligence, Classified British Memo Indicates
A classified British memo indicates that the Bush administration planned as early as summer 2002 to oust then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and wanted U.S. intelligence to support that decision, Knight Ridder reported today (see GSN, April 29). The memo recounts a July 23, 2002, meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and top security advisers. A visit to Washington by the head of the British MI-6 intelligence service was discussed in the meeting. “There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable,” the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. President George W. Bush “wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” “The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” the memo quotes him as saying. The memo is “an absolutely accurate description of what transpired,” during the meeting in Washington, a former senior U.S. official said. The Bush administration at the time claimed that no decision had been made on invading Iraq, Knight Ridder reported. The U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group found no weapons of mass destruction following the March 2003 invasion. The memo also cites British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw saying, “Bush had made up his mind to take military action.” “But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran,” Straw said, according to the memo (Strobel/Walcott, Knight Ridder/Seattle Times, May 6).
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