An earlier leaked memo to Downing Street ...

[evermind]

... seems to contradict Tony Blair's statement today:

bLiar:

But all the way through that period of time, we were trying to look for a way of managing to resolve this without conflict. As it happened, we weren't able to do that because -- as I think was very clear -- there was no way that Saddam Hussein was ever going to change the way that he worked, or the way that he acted.

I'm not sure how familiar DU'ers are with the earlier leaked memos, which made little impact even in the British press, so I hope you'll forgive me if this is all old news...

Around the 18th Sept, 2004, a set of 6 papers from various members of the Blair set were leaked, via the Daily Telegraph. (See http://lists.stir.ac.uk/pipermail/media-watch/2004-October/001523.html for an analysis. Google on "leaks-brief.zip" to see where I got my copy )

One of these was a memo, dated 18 March 2002, from then British ambassador to Washington, Christopher Meyer to a Downing Street foreign policy advisor, David Manning, who later replaced Meyer. It reported on a meeting between Meyer and Paul Wolfowitz.

I'll reproduce it in full, below, for curiosity's sake, but the most interesting part is in the second paragraph.

There was plainly a strategy, alluded to in the DSM, of forcing an unmeetable ultimatum on Saddam with the weapons inspection, so that when it was not met, a convenient pretext for invasion would be provided. This is clearly alluded to in the second paragraph of the Meyer memo, as the need to "wrongfoot" Saddam. This gives the lie to Blair's protestations of innocent intentions vis-a-vis the inspections program and a peaceful resolution.

Here's the memo (I've typed it from a graphic in a PDF, but *some* of the typos were in the original! :-)

CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL

British Embassy Washington

From the Ambassador
Christopher Meyer KCMG

18 March 2002

Sir David Manning KCMG
No 10 Downing Street

IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN: CONVERSATION WITH WOLFOWITZ

1   Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, came to Sunday lunch on 17
March.

2   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.

3   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.

4   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.

5   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).

6   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.

7   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).