On Friday I was interviewed for a segment on the local NBC news regarding the DSM and the creation of DowningStreetMemo.com. As a counterpoint, the station interviewed one Steven Weber of UC Berkeley's Institute for International Studies. Professor Weber's arguments were pretty weak, especially given his lofty position and impressive credentials. Still, I felt compelled to write a rebuttal to each of the main arguments he made, and you can find those below the fold.
I'd be very interested to get some feedback on this, with an eye towards posting a revised and improved version on the DSM site.
1) The issue of why we went to war is moot. We're there now; we should focus on how to get out while bringing a stable Iraq into being.
We can all agree that a stable Iraq is the most desirable outcome, and indeed the US should do whatever it can to make this a reality. But this is an entirely separate issue from the question of why we went to war, and it should not obscure the need to have a complete and public airing of the issues raised in the DSM.
There is ample evidence--in the DSM and elsewhere--that the administration misrepresented the nature and extent of the threat posed by Saddam's Iraq, that the case for war was built on this misrepresentation, and as a consequence many tens of thousands of people (Americans, Iraqis and others) have lost their lives. Every time someone is killed or injured as a result of the ongoing violence in Iraq, it becomes more--not less--important that we understand why we went to war. If we were misled, as it now seems impossible to deny, then the people who misled us must be held accountable for their deception and its horrific (and continuing) results. To say that the issue of why we invaded Iraq is irrelevant because it's in the past is akin to saying that the specifics of Watergate became irrelevant when Richard Nixon resigned.
2) The information in the DSM is not new, and by extension is not "news".
True, much of the information contained in the DSM has been reported elsewhere, so in that sense it is perhaps not a "smoking gun". This, however, does not diminish the importance of what the memo reveals. When viewed in context--as we have attempted to do with DowningStreetMemo.com--the DSM paints a damning portrait of an administration artificially pumping up its case for war while at the same time disingenuously asserting its desire to avoid it.
What makes the DSM so vital from a news perspective is:
- The source - short of a similar document on the US side, there isn't a much more credible source than the British Prime Minister and his senior staff
- The timing - the fact that the meeting in question took place in July 2002 illustrates just how early on Bush had made up his mind to "remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of WMD and terrorism."
- The "nutshell" - in a few sentences, the memo summarizes all of the key components of Bush's deception: that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States, that the US was willing to work with the UN on a diplomatic solution, that war was a last resort, but if undertaken that the legal basis for it was sound, and that the aftermath of an invasion, if necessary, would be managed responsibly.
The content of the DSM is undeniably newsworthy. As to why it isn't being covered adequately here in the US, well that's another diary.
3) Americans knew the case for war was thin from the outset, but supported the invasion anyway. The DSM doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.
Let us assume for the moment that Americans had the benefit of a truly fair and balanced news media from which to gather information and form an opinion on the necessity of war. The DSM makes it clear that there were some things that the public did not know--could not have known--such as the NSC's unwillingness to work with the UN. There were also other things that were presented by the administration in such a distorted way as to render them useless to even the most engaged American citizen in forming an opinion on the necessity of war.
The non-existent connection between Saddam and al Qaida, for example, was cited so many times by the administration that at the height of prewar hysteria, well over half of Americans polled believed Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks when in fact Iraq had nothing to do with it. (Sadly, many people still believe this.) Similarly, claims about Iraq's WMD capability featured regular invocations of "mushroom clouds" when there was in fact no evidence on which to base such claims.
What the DSM shows us is that the conflation of Saddam, WMD and terrorism was in essence a marketing strategy, a preconceived justification for a preconceived war. As early as July of 2002, the President and his administration had not only decided to invade Iraq in order to depose Saddam, they had also determined how to enlist the support of the American people by playing on their worst fears.
For those of us who saw through the Bush administration's house of cards before the invasion, the DSM doesn't really offer anything we "didn't already know." However, its provenance and its comprehensive yet straightforward representation of the administration's Iraq policy present the facts in a much more compelling light. That, in short, is why it is so important and why more and more people are now joining the call for an investigation.