White House 'double-crossed' Blair, says Plame husband

[sabra]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/24/uwilson.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/11/24/ixportaltop.html

White House 'double-crossed' Blair, says Plame husband


Tony Blair was "doubled crossed" by US President George W Bush's aides in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the former diplomat at the centre of a political crisis engulfing the White House.

...

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Wilson said: "I watched the way that the British built their case, and it was a disarmament case as best I could see it.

"Mr Blair came to the US when Mr Bush was talking about regime change, and when he left Mr Bush started talking about disarmament as the objective.

"Mr Bush went to the United Nations, I think that that had a lot to do with the influence of the British. I think that Mr Blair really thought that he was getting involved in a disarmament campaign, which was all to the good - I fully supported that.

[bullimiami]

1. sorry bub, if blair was doublecrossed and was still licking bushs boots

he has no integrity whatsoever.

[rpannier]

2. Oh Boo Hoo to bLiar

If he was tricked he should have been a man and admitted it, then backed out. He didn't, so the poodle is just as guilty as scrubbo.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[spanone]

4. No sympathy for Blair. He's looking for a cop out. I call bullshit.

If he truly believed this and didn't speak up he's worse than I thought.

[1932]

9. Wilson is saying this, not Blair.

[evermind]

12. Wilson is assuming far too much good faith on Blair's part. Has he read

the DSM, and related documents? Some of those clearly indicate the point of the "disarmament process" was creating a legal basis for war. For example, the Jul 21 2002 cabinet office paper says in its summary:

Ministers are invited to:

<snip>

(3) Agree to engage the US on the need to set military plans within a realistic political strategy, which includes identifying the succession to Saddam Hussein and creating the conditions necessary to justify government military action, which might include an ultimatum for the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq. This should include a call from the Prime Minister to President Bush ahead of the briefing of US military plans to the President on 4 August.

It is plain here that the UK government is discussing UN resolutions not as a "disarmament process", but as a means of creating "conditions necessary to justify ... military action".

Further on, the document says:

14. It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject (because he is unwilling to accept unfettered access) and which would not be regarded as unreasonable by the international community. However, failing that (or an Iraqi attack) we would be most unlikely to achieve a legal base for military action by January 2003.

The UK government plan a UN resolution purely for the purpose of having Saddam reject it! How could the non-peaceful intent be plainer?

[Greeby]

14. Of course he knows about the DSM

He was at Conyers' broom-closet hearing remember?

[evermind]

16. So why come out with this rubbish, then? (n/t)

[1932]

15. What about this:

The Goal

5. Our objective should be a stable and law-abiding Iraq, within present borders, co-operating with the international community, no longer posing a threat to its neighbours or to international security, and abiding by its international obligations on WMD. It seems unlikely that this could be achieved while the current Iraqi regime remains in power. US military planning unambiguously takes as its objective the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, followed by elimination if Iraqi WMD. It is however, by no means certain, in the view of UK officials, that one would necessarily follow from the other. Even if regime change is a necessary condition for controlling Iraqi WMD, it is certainly not a sufficient one.

So, they believed there were WMD.

and

Benefits/Risks

19. Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks. In particular, we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective as set out in paragraph 5 above. A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the US military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden. Further work is required to define more precisely the means by which the desired endstate would be created, in particular what form of Government might replace Saddam Hussein's regime and the timescale within which it would be possible to identify a successor. We must also consider in greater detail the impact of military action on other UK interests in the region.


Doesn't this sort of support what Wilson is saying? Disarmament was one of the UK's two concerns, and they were concerned that the US strategy wouldn't achieve that goal.

I believe Churchill said that one of the best ways to prevent war is to delay it. That seems to be the concern of the DSM. After laying out the issues, it's final concern is this:

Timescales

21. Although the US military could act against Iraq as soon as November, we judge that a military campaign is unlikely to start until January 2003, if only because of the time it will take to reach consensus in Washington. That said, we judge that for climactic reasons, military action would need to start by January 2003, unless action were deferred until the following autumn.

22. As this paper makes clear, even this timescale would present problems. This means that:

(a) We need to influence US consideration of the military plans before President Bush is briefed on 4 August, through contacts betweens the Prime Minister and the President and at other levels;

[evermind]

17. Well then how do you explain Christopher Meyer's comment

on his meeting with Wolfowitz: "I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors" ?

When reading the cabinet office paper, you have to remember that there were different levels of knowledge among the people present. Probably some of them really thought there were WMD in Iraq.

However, the existence or otherwise of WMD is orthogonal to the intent of the UK gov wrt UN processes. You could have a serious attempt at disarmament if you thought there were WMD, but you could also attempt to use faux disarmament as an excuse to get a legal pretext.

Any serious attempt at peaceful disarmament would have taken a longer view, and allowed the inspection process to complete, rather than rushing into an invasion with the inspectors still over there trying to get their job done, and complaining about the difficulties the invasion was causing them!

My problem with Wilson is that he's pointing at the difference in the US posture before and after the UK made their desire for a legal pretext a condition of entry into the conflict, and taking that change in posture purely at face value. In reality it was merely a change of strategy, suggested by the UK, and there was no change in the underlying posture. Hence no "double-cross". The UK knew just as well as Bush did that the UN shenanigans was just a piece of theatre, as the DSM documents (including the quotes I gave) make perfectly clear.

[1932]

18. Because it helps the disarmament without war strategy as well?

I don't know.

I guess you would still need to build up public support for intervention even if your goal wasn't to invade with an army and shoot and kill people. As the DSM memo says, they believed that they couldn't get disarmament without a regime change (but they didn't see the former as naturally flowing from the latter).

Also, I suspect that it's hard to argue that you can use DSM as evidence of one thing and then say that you can't trust it as evidence of other things (notwithstanding your argument that a cabinet-level document would be written with lies incorporated so to approximate different parties' different levels of knowledge). Similarly, it's hard to say that Wislon's judgment should be trusted on some things but not others. They guy is a former ambassador with a wife in the CIA who participated in this thing at a relatively deep level.

Perhaps there's a theory of the case which allows us to give all parts of the DSM and Wilson's opinions equal weight?

[evermind]

24. Nope, you wouldn't have a "need to wrongfoot Saddam" if you

were looking for disarmament pure and simple. Besides, look at the context (he's reporting on his meeting with Wolfowitz, March 2002)

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.

( http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3809302 )

This is *clearly* about using the UN to build a legal pretext for war, and that is *clearly* the focus of analysis by the UK gov in March 2002, and later in the year.

As for the idea of a sort of intervention without invasion - I've seen nothing to suggest that was ever seriously considered by anyone.

I think Wilson has said some great things about the Bush administration, and appreciate he's somewhat of a hero. That is why I find his apparent lack of insight into Blair to be mysterious.

If he's really saying that Blair seriously sought peaceful disarmament and moderated the Bush response and that Bush then double-crossed Blair by invading anyway, that flies in the face of the evidence of the DSM documents. The British concern with the UN process was simply in aid of providing perceived legitimacy for an invasion.

[1932]

28. The DSM is a Rorschach test.

I wonder if the paragraphs beyond paragraph 22 clearly stated the real state of mind of the Blair administration.

I'm not sure wanting to move to the brink of war implies that you want to go to war, and it's possible that they believed that this was the best way to disarm and remove a threat of force by Iraq without actually taking the next step of an invasion.

The memo is missing an explicit statement in it that Blair desired to go to war. You can read parts of it that reveal a willingness to create the appearance of impending invastion as a desire to go to war. Parts of it suggest that they saw the inevitability of an US-led invasion. Some people might think that that they were merely prescient. Others might say that just be predicting it they desired it. You can also read parts that sugges that the UK wanted to delay an invasion, possibly with the Churchillian intention of delaying it to the point that the war wouldn't take place. They also state their goals: integrating Iraq into the communtiy of nations and eliminating the military threat they posed to their neighbors and, I believe, almost explicitly say that the US's plan for an invasion might jeopardize those goals. So there's a lot of stuff in that DSM and none of it, I believe, is 100% conclusive of intent, which leaves open the possiblity that Ambassador Wilson's insight is accurate.

[evermind]

30. My quote is quite unambiguous, and not from the DSM

Why wander so completely off topic, and become so vague?

Don't you have a response to my actual point about this quote, from the UK's ambassador to Washington, who is saying "we backed regime change" (on condition we can "wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and UN SCRs") to Paul Wolfowitz, widely regarded as a driver of US war planning?

If you're suggesting that there would be a need to build international and domestic support, and create a legal pretext for "regime change", merely to engage in an act of brinksmanship, then I think you've Rorschached yourself into an alternate reality ;-)

[1932]

32. Wander off topic? I thought we were talking about the DSM.

And I thought I addressed the quote. Re your last paragraph: I don't see that that's not incompatible. You say that like it's a priori, but you must know that it isn't. And yes, I do admit that I could be "Rorschached" by the memo -- precisely because it doesn't tell you exactly what the British were trying to work towards. (Maybe there was more after paragraph 22, which seems to end midsentence with a semicolon?)

And if we were really going to stay on topic: my point is that I'm not sure any of the evidence you cited suggests that Wilson's interpretation could be wrong.

[evermind]

34. Nope, I haven't quoted from the DSM itself. Only related documents.

If you have a look at the additional documents at the wikipedia link in my other post, you'll see that there was a concerted British effort to plan for an invasion - it was seen as the only workable militar option.

Take a look at the Straw and Ricketts docs at the wikipedia link ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Cabinet_Office_Documents )

I don't know how you could not see that the paras from Meyer and Manning I quoted, in particular, show the British wanting to use the UN process merely to create conditions for war.

I mean, come on! The pre-DSM briefing letter (Jul 21 2002) actually *names* itself "Conditions for military action"! ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1648758,00.html )

The discussion is not about disarmament, it is about "how can we go to war".

Wilson's interpretation, as relayed by the opening post in this thread, is that the UK was seriously seeking a disarmament solution. ("I think Mr Blair really thought he was getting involved in a disarmament campaign, which was all to the good").

No. As the documents make plain, as early as March 2002, the internal discussions of the UK cabinet and Foreign Office were all about "regime change".

To suggest that Bush and Blair's dalliance at the UN was anything other than an attempt to trick Saddam into providing a legal basis for war, after a serious perusal of these documents is incredibly naive or disingenuous, it seems to me.

[1932]

35. All I can say is to reiterate things I've already written.

I think the smoking gun is missing and I think some of the conclusions you draw are not as a priori, as you think they are. I disagree with your theory that the DSM included lies to accomodate some cabinet members' false beliefs. Maybe I am naive, but I'm not disingenuous. And I suspect that Wilson is neither naive nor disingenuous. And I really don't think that Wilson "playing off the ends against the middle" or whatever that theory is which is the only other explanation I've seen here.

[evermind]

36. I don't think you have read my posts very carefully.

Firstly, I have never quoted from the DSM. You seem to be mistaking the pre-DSM briefing letter for the DSM.

Secondly, have you really looked at the quote from Manning? (Manning is reporting to Blair on his meeting with Condoleeza Rice, March 2002)

Here it is again:

It is clear that Bush is grateful for your [Blair's] 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. I told Condi that we realised that the [Bush] administration could go it alone ... But if it wanted company, it would have to take account 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 U.S. was conscious of the international framework, and the insistence of many countries on the need for a legal base. Renewed refusal by Saddam to accept unfettered inspections would be a powerful argument.

In case you lose the gist in that long paragraph, here is the potted version:

Blair would not budge in his support for regime change.

If the US wanted military support from UK, the UN weapons inspectors must be handled in such a way as to persuade people that there was a legal base for military action.

Ideally Saddam would reject unfettered inspections, providing a powerful argument for an invasion.

How can you interpret the above as evidence of a serious attempt at disarmament?

If you doubt that the UK Foreign Office legal department was scratching around for a solution to the problem of how to legally participate in an invasion, please examine the Straw and Ricketts documents, and possibly others, at the wikipedia link.

BTW, I'm not accusing you of naivety or disingenuousness, only Wilson :-)

[evermind]

31. PS. See also other early 2002 cabinet papers

for example at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Cabinet_Office_Documents

In one of the memos, David Manning, who was Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, reported on a meeting in Washington, D.C., with Rice;

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. I told Condi that we realised that the administration could go it alone ... But if it wanted company, it would have to take account 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 U.S. was conscious of the international framework, and the insistence of many countries on the need for a legal base. Renewed refusal by Saddam to accept unfettered inspections would be a powerful argument.

... for example.

[librechik]

20. could be Wilson is trying to provoke a reaction from Blair

This is an outrageous charge. Won't he be compelled to answer it by somebody at some point?

IMO, Joe's just moving the game forward, when he can. Now the ball is in Tony's court.

[evermind]

5. Here's what really happened.

The US announce to UK they are going to invade Iraq, and need British support.

The UK (Blair) considers its position, and realises it's caught between not wanting to upset Bush by demurring from the invasion, and not wanting to lose its credibility, nationally and within the EU and the civilised world, by going ahead with an invasion with no legal basis.

The UK then comes up with a plan to use UN resolutions and the UN inspection process to make it look as though there is a legal basis for war. This involves making strenuous demands for UN inspectors' access in the hope that Saddam will deny them (he didn't, as it turned out) and proposing UN resolutions intended to give the appearance of a serious attempt at a peaceful resolution (there was no such attempt in practice: the whole UN game was simply to get a pretext for war).

The UK makes US compliance with this plan a condition of the UK's involvement in the conflict, in discussions at various levels with the US.

The US, realising it needs UK military bases and wants the UK on side, agrees and starts pursuing disarmament resolutions and inspections processes via the UN.

Saddam frantically complies with all the UN items. Other countries are not amenable to being party to the con-job perpetrated by US-UK at the UN, hence the French "veto" of the proposed UN SCR in the immediate run-up to the war.

US/UK invade anyway. The UK government has managed to pull the wool over sufficiently many eyes to get its participation ok'd by parliament.

All this is made amply clear in the DSM and related documents, if you read them carefully.

[Briar]

7. You might add

that the British invade anyway and blame *the French* for the catastrophe, secure in the knowledge that ugly old British Francophobia will mean that the media, to a man or woman, will accept this without question.

[evermind]

10. Surely that was a detail in the thinking, once the French nixed further

resolutions :-)

But, I was only trying to give a broad outline :-)

[RogueTrooper]

13. Don't forget the bit

where Bill Clinton spoke at the Labour Party conference in support action in Iraq. Without that speech Blair would never have had the support of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He would have lost the crucial votes otherwise

[julianer]

6. No, I don't agree

with him.

I've read and heard, and it seems to be grudgingly acknowledged, that Blair offered a 'blood sacrifice' to Bush sometime in 2002 to prove his seriousness in the war of terror. I haven't any proof of this but I heard the blood sacrifice stuff at the time, i.e. before the war.

There's also the UK's own dodgy intelligence - the 45 minute claim, the plagiarised WMD report, the 'direct threat to our way of life' balls. This was all generated in cooperation with the OSP I suspect.

Blair would have known that Iraq had no WMD - his own intelligence couldn't show there were any changes since the destruction of the stockpiles in the early '90's, the intelligence was 'thin' according to Jack Straw. Hans Blix and Scott Ritter were telling governments there were no WMD.

[Briar]

8. Robin Cook

plainly knew that the evidence was shaky. I always wondered if his demotion from Foreign Secretary back in 2001 was a result of Iraq-war pressure from the Bush regime back then. Who among us doubted that an assault on Iraq was inevitable from the moment Bush was selected for office?

[Drum]

11. Robin Cook was my hero in the run-up,

for his courage to say "bollocks!" to all the war hype.

May he rest in peace....

[Maggie_May]

19. Blair new what he was getting into

oil thats what its all about. Yes Saddam had be taken out but it should have been done international not a invasion by the US.

[Straight Shooter]

21. Sounds to me like Wilson is playing both ends against the middle.

So to speak. Not that he's playing frivolous games, he's inserting points of view into the debate to cause each side to become defensive against the other.

I wonder what he thinks privately of Blair's culpability in this disastrous war.

[Boo Boo]

22. This is a poorly written article, and I don't believe that Wilson

actually believes that Blair was ignorant of Bush's intentions. In fact, we now know that the Brits were fully aware of Bush's intentions ("... facts are being fixed around the policy."), and Wilson must know this also. Obviously, the Bush admin was totally committed to invading from the very beginning, and the recent book by a member of Blair's team proves the point.

So what the hell is he talking about here? I think he's referring to Bush making the appearance of going along with Blair's plan to work through the U.N., "wrong-foot" Saddam, and get another U.N. resolution before going to War. I think Blair had already committed to going with us, but needed another resolution before going. Bush made like he was OK with that, but as soon as he got his Congressional authorization he rolled Blair.

So, yeah, Bush double-crossed him. Blair told Bush what he needed, politically (and legally) in order to take his country to war alongside the U.S.; Bush went through the motions, and then hung him out to dry. I remember thinking this at the time.

Tony Blair is W's BEEAAAATCH!

[JoFerret]

23. Plames's husband versus Wilson's wife.

.

[beyond_the_pale]

25. I looked to Blair for Credibility

At first, I was more comfortable about the Terror War when Tony Blair supported Bush because I believed that cooler heads (Great Britain) would prevail. When Blair fully supported Bush I could not reconcile this partnership in my head.

Now I believe that I was deceived by Tony Blair as well.

Blair had more credentials for Americans on international diplomacy than Bush, so his support of Bush must had a great persuasion on Americans who were on the fence regarding support of the preemptive war against Iraq.

[lovuian]

26. Blair knew what he was getting into Sorry Wilson!!!

too much there for Blair to be naive!!!

No he is trying to destroy the Labour Party and doing a dang fine job of it!!!

[Tom Bombadil]

27. In defense of Blair.

I really believe he thought he could shape events and act as a restraining influence on US policy. However, somewhere along the way he got sucked into the neocon fantasy only never to escape. Initially he had good intentions but he couldn't possibly let America go it alone. Imagine if that were the case, Iraq would probbaly have been nuked by now.

Simon Jenkins of The Guardian has a good article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1637206,00.html

[goforit]

29. This is rediculous!!!...Blair is responsible..no excuses!!!

[WhiteTara]

33. OMG Is Wilson drinking koolaid

at the turkey day trot? Blair was culpable from the beginning. He was offered a big job at Carlyle and he threw his country to the wolves. :puke:

[acmavm]

37. There are just some things that Wilson just can't possibly know. He can

have opinions, he can have intuitions, he can guess. But he just doesn't KNOW. This is one of them.

As for blair, he's been totally complicit in this fiasco. He's aided and abetted his Connecticutt Cowboy Fraud buddy before, during, and after the crime. Don't give a shit what blair knows, knew, and learns in the future. He's guilty as sin.