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THE AMERICAN MEDIA are very excited all of a sudden about the infamous Downing Street memo. This, you may recall, was the account of a meeting about Iraq at No 10 in July 2002, first revealed in The Sunday Times last month.
The memo is regarded by many of the Bush Administration’s critics as the smoking gun, absolute proof that the President lied about his intentions towards Iraq three years ago in the run-up to war. In a crucial passage it recounts the observations of Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI5, of meetings he had attended in Washington, eight months before the invasion, even as Mr Bush and Mr Blair were insisting that they still favoured a diplomatic outcome to the Iraq question. The war was “inevitable”, Sir Richard discovered, and the Bush Administration was planning to cook the intelligence to justify it.
Some Democrats are calling for Mr Bush’s impeachment; Republicans say it is nothing new. I was pondering the significance of this memo when, the other evening, I got an anonymous phone call. A raspy voice told me to go outside and look under the magnolia tree. I assumed one of the children had been playing tricks again but I dutifully went to check, and there in a plain manila envelope, was a sheet of official-looking paper.
Its contents were so extraordinary that I feel it my solemn duty simply to reproduce them here:
To: Director, Central Intelligence; Assistant to President, National Security; Sec Def; Sec State
Urgent: Eyes only. Record of a conversation with someone from Downing Street, July 6, 2002.
Had a conversation yesterday with some Englishman with a plummy accent who insisted that I call him “Dear Love”. I think this is one of those John le Carré-style codenames that British Intelligence are so fond of. I got suspicious when his mobile phone kept going off and he answered, “C”. I don’t get the Brits at all.
Love wanted to know all about the war plan. Obviously since I didn’t trust him I was going to palm him off with the authorised fiction about how war was not inevitable, how we’re still seeking a diplomatic solution, hoping to work with the international community etc. Before I could, his phone rang again and, after a quiet word, he handed it to me and I found myself speaking to Tony Blair (Lapdog, to give him his Secret Service codename). Having established Love’s bona fides I spilt the whole story.
I told him that the case for war was overwhelming and a conflict was scheduled for some time early next year. I said that we knew Saddam was a harmless little bunny who wanted nothing more than to live in peace with his neighbors and die peacefully in Babylon. We knew he’d got rid of all his WMD years ago and that he’d not so much as smiled at a terrorist in at least a decade.
But I explained the American reality to him. The President was a Texas oil man on a mission from God to wipe out his foes, I said. I told him about the visions the President had had down in Crawford calling him to a new crusade against the Arabs, and about how angry Mr Bush gets whenever anyone mentions how his father was humiliated by Saddam in 1991.
I explained that the military-industrial complex was so geared up for war it would be impossible to stop it in any case. How Halliburton was pressuring the Vice-President to get some big contracts to make up for the asbestos litigation mess it was in.
I mentioned the neocon Brotherhood meetings where Paul Wolfowitz had contacted the spirit of Leo Strauss to get final authorisation for the invasion. I told him about the Republican strategy sessions in which Karl Rove had insisted on a war in 2003, in time for some really good photo ops for use in the election campaign.
And then of course there was oil. Bringing Iraq back onstream just in time for next summer’s driving season in the States would go down well with the voters.
Love seemed a bit agitated by all this and muttered something about international law. “You Brits”, I chuckled, “always did have a dry sense of humour.” But he seemed serious.
So I winged it — hope you don’t mind. If it’s really that important to Mr Blair, I said, we’d make sure it was all OK. We could fix the facts and the intelligence around the policy. Just as we’d “proved” al-Qaeda was behind 9/11 to justify hitting the Taleban, we’d demonstrate that Saddam was going to nuke us all in less than 45 minutes.
He seemed to think that postwar planning was important, though I was not really sure what he was talking about. He kept saying we’d need to have some idea of the kind of government that would run the place; that there could be messy ethnic strife and insurgencies, and some other stuff (my eyes glazed over at this point).
I reassured him. I said that sort of detail wasn’t the American way. E pluribus unum. In God we trust. The truth will set you free.
I explained the Iran invasion scenario to him — and the planned British role in it. I told him about the idea of having John Bolton go to New York to create a diplomatic incident with the Iranians in a UN corridor. I have to say Love seemed a bit distracted at this point. His knees were knocking and he kept dropping his notes.
Before I could get on to North Korea and the Big One (that’s what we’re calling China still, isn’t it?), he seemed really quite sick and muttered something about having to catch the next flight back to London for talks with M and SIS and JIC and the PM. I wished him all the best.
Boy, it’s good to be back in government service again after all these years. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the opportunity. And I promise, no more trips to the underground parking garage. I’ve learnt my lesson!
Sincerely,
Mark Felt"
Even if it's not Mark Felt, this is just unbelievable. If it's verified immediately this news need to spread and be mandated, permanently recorded in the congressional record.
:wow: :thumbsup: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:
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