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Dear XXX,
Thank you for contacting me concerning the Downing Street memo. I appreciate hearing from you.
As you may know, on May 1, 2005, the London Sunday Times published the leaked text of meeting minutes summarized by a senior-level foreign policy aid to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The minutes, or memo, are dated July 23, 2002 and document reports by a British intelligence officer concerning his discussions with members of the Bush Administration concerning possible military action against Iraq. With regard to the Bush Administration, the top-secret minutes indicate that British officials believed "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. The British officials believed this was occurring despite evidence that Hussein was not threatening his neighbors and that his weapons of mass destruction capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran.
I share your outrage at the content of the Downing Street memo, which seems to confirm some of the worst suspicions about the President's motivation for going to war. I recently joined several other members of the House of Representatives in sending a letter to President Bush, questioning him about the substance of the Downing Street memo. Our letter asks the President: whether anyone in the Bush Administration disputes the accuracy of the memo; whether the Administration recruited allies to join in an offensive against Iraq, including Great Britain, before receiving congressional approval to go to war; whether the Administration created an ultimatum concerning weapons inspections in order to help justify the invasion of Iraq; when he and Mr. Blair first agreed it was necessary to invade Iraq; and whether the Administration engaged in "fixing" intelligence and facts to support a decision to go to war. We have not yet received a response from the White House.
The President must level with the American people; he took us to war with defective intelligence, too few allies, and inadequate planning. What he owes us now is a realistic plan to accelerate and improve the training of Iraqi security forces and to mobilize international cooperation. The burden must not be America's alone, and it cannot continue indefinitely.
Thank you again for contacting me.
Sincerely,
DAVID PRICE Member of Congress
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Price voted against CAFTA too. :)
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