[
Updated Post: with another document]
This is an extended and updated post
from this morning based on recommendations and additions from commenters (thanks, obgynlover!).
As Congressman Conyers' current diary indicates, new documents regarding the Downing Street Minutes are forthcoming at his June 16th hearings.
To whet your appetite for follow-up information, here's a rushed, first offering, via Scoop, which involves a discussion between the UK Ambassador to the US and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and a post from David Manning (see below). As Scoop Co-Editor Alastair Thompson notes, the following transcription was retrieved from the PDF version posted online (typos from the original; emphases mine):
From the Ambassador
Christopher Meyer KCMG
18 March 2002
Sir David Manning KCMG
No 10 Downing Street
IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN: CONVERSATION WITH WOLFOWITZ
CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
British Embassy Washington
- Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, came to Sunday lunch on 17 March.
- On Iraq I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used with Condi Rice last week, We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option. It would be a tough sell for us domestically, and probably tougher elsewhere in Europe. The US could go it alone if it wanted to. But if it wanted to act with partners, there had to be a strategy for building support for military action against Saddam. I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN SCRs and the critical importance of the MEPP as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy. If all this could be accomplished skilfully, we were fairly confident that a number of countries would come on board.
- I said that the UK was giving serious thought to publishing a paper that would make the case against Saddam. If the UK were to join with the US in any operation against Saddam, we would have to be able to take a critical mass of parliamentary and public opinion with us. It was extraordinary how people had forgotten how bad he was.
- Wolfowitz said that he fully agreed. He took a slightly different position from others in the Administration, who were focussed on Saddam's capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction. The WMD danger was of course crucial to the public case against Saddam, particularly the potential linkage to terrorism. But Wolfowitz thought it indispensable to spell out in detail Saddam's barbarism. This was well documented from what he had done during the occupation of Kuwait, the incursion into Kurdish territory, the assault on the Marsh Arabs, and to his own people. A lot of work had been done on this towards the end of the first Bush administration. Wolfowitz thought that this would go a long way to destroying any notion of moral equivalence between Iraq and Israel. I said that I had been forcefully struck, when addressing university audiences in the US how ready students were to gloss over Saddam's crimes and to blame the US and the UK for the suffering of the Iraqi people.
- Wolfowitz said that it was absurd to deny the link between terrorism and Saddam. There might be doubt about the alleged meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker on 9/11, and Iraqi intelligence (did we, he asked, know anything more about this meeting?). But there were other substantiated cases of Saddam giving comfort to terrorists, including someone involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center (the latest New Yorker apparently has a story about links between Saddam and Al Qaeda operating in Kurdistan).
- I asked for Wolfowitz's take on the stuggle inside the Administration between the pro- and anti- INC lobbies (well documented in Sy Hersh's recent New Yorker piece, which I gave you). He said that he found himself between the two sides (but as the conversation developed, it became clear that Wolfowitz was far more pro-INC than not). He said that he was strongly opposed to what some were advocating: a coalition including all outside factions except the INC (INA, KDP, PUK, SCIRI). This would not work. Hostility towards the INC was in reality hostility towards Chalabi. It was true that Chalabi was not the easiest person to work with. Bute had a good record in bringing high-grade defectors out of Iraq. The CIA stubbornly refused to recognise this. They unreasonably denigrated the INC because of their fixation with Chalabi. When I mentioned that the INC was penetraded by Iraqi intelligence, Wolfowitz commented that this was probably the case with all the opposition groups: it was something we would have to live with. As to the Kurds, it was true that they were living well (another point to be made in any public dossier on Saddam) and that they feared provoking an incursion by Baghdad, But there were good people among the Kurds, including in particular Salih (?) of the PUK. Wolfowitz brushed over my reference to the absence of SUnni in the INC: there was a big difference between Iraqi and Iranian Shia. The former just wanted to be rid of Saddam.
- Wolvowitz was pretty dismissive of the desirability of a military coup and of the defector generals in the wings. The latter had blood on their hands. The important thing was to try to have Saddam replaced by something like a functioning democracy. Though imperfect, the Kurdish model was not bad. How to achieve this, I asked? Only through a coalition of all the parties was the answer (we did not get into military planning).
FROM: DAVID MANNING
DATE: 14 MARCH 2002
CC: JONATHAN POWELL
PRIME MINISTER
YOUR TRIP TO THE US
I had dinner with Condi on Tuesday; and lunch with her and an NSC team on Wednesday (to which Christopher Meyer also came). These were
good exchanges, and particularly frank when we were on-on-one at dinner.
I attach the records in case you want to glance.
IRAQ
We spent a long time at dinner on IRAQ. It is clear that Bush is grateful for your support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said
that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very
different than anything in the States. And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very
carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option.
Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed. But there were some signs, since we last spoke, of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks. (See the attached piece by Seymour Hersh which Christopher Meyer says gives a pretty accurate picture of the uncertain state of the debate in Washington.)
From what she said, Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions:
--how to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified;
--what value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition;
--how to coordinate a US/allied military campaign with internal opposition (assuming there is any);
--what happens on the morning after?
Bush will want to pick your brains. He will also want to hear whether he can expect coalition support. I told Condi that we realised that the
Administration could go it alone if it chose. But if it wanted company, it would have to take account of the concerns of its potential coalition
partners. In particular:
--the Un dimension. The issue of the weapons inspectors must be handled in a way that would persuade European and wider opinion that the US was conscious of the international framework, and the insistence of many countries on the need for a legal base. Renwed refused [sic] by Saddam to accept unfettered inspections would be a powerful argument;
--the paramount importance of tackling Israel/Palestine. Unless we
did, we could find ourselves bonbing Iraq and losing the Gulf.
YOUR VISIT TO THE RANCH
No doubt we need to keep a sense of perspective. But my talks with Condi convinced me that Bush wants to hear you views on Iraq before taking
decisions. He also wants your support. He is still smarting from the com-
ments by other European leaders on his Iraq policy.
This gives you real influence: on the public relations strategy; on the UN and weapons inspections; and on US planning for any military campaign.
This could be critically important. I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties. They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.
Will the Sunni majority really respond to an uprising led by Kurds and Shias? Will Americans really put in enough ground troops to do the job
if the Kurdish/Shi'ite stratagem fails? Even if they do will they be willing to take the sort of casualties that the Republican Guard may
inflict on them if it turns out to be an urban war, and Iraqi troops don't conveniently collapse in a heap as Richard Perle and others confid-
ently predict? They need to answer these and other tough questions, in a more convincing way than they have so far before concluding that they
can do the business.
The talks at the ranch will also give you the chance to push Bush on the Middle East. The Iraq factor means that there may never be a better
opportunity to get this Administration to give sustained attention to reviving the MEPP.
DAVID MANNING
These documents appear to confirm the message of the Downing Street Minutes, indicating that the Bush Administration had already set policy to go to war against Iraq before diplomatic efforts began in the second half of 2002.
Updates will follow, as the additional documents are released.
[Original cross-posted at Political Strategy]