Chair of Republican Party Put at a Loss by Downing Street Minutes
On June 5, 2005, Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the Republican Party, was asked about the Downing Street Minutes on "NBC
News' Meet the Press."
To my knowledge, this was the first serious treatment of the matter on any U.S. network news show. It still remains for
a news program to report on the matter on its own behalf, as opposed to asking a Republican guest to comment on it.
The transcript is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8062380 and below with commentary:
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the now-famous Downing Street memo. This was a memo, July 23, 2002, from the head of
British intelligence to Prime Minister Blair; in effect, notes taken from a briefing that was given to Prime Minister
Blair after the head of British intelligence came back from a trip to Washington. It says this: "[The head of British
Intelligence] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was
now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, though military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism
and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
This is July of 2002. We didn't invade until March of 2003. And the prime minister of Great Britain is being told by
the head of his intelligence that he went to Washington and believes that a decision had already been made and that the
administration was fixing or manipulating the intelligence to support the policy.
MR. MEHLMAN: Tim, that report has been discredited by everyone else who's looked at it since then. Whether it's the 911
Commission, whether it's the Senate, whoever's looked at this has said there was no effort to change the intelligence at
all.
[Mehlman is pretending to claim that these bodies have investigated the Downing Street Minutes and discredited them,
while really claiming that these bodies discredited the idea that the Bush administration cooked the intelligence to fit
its desired policy. This amounts to claiming that a new piece of evidence can be dismissed on the grounds of what
authorities allegedly concluded PRIOR TO discovering the new evidence. This is absurd.]
The fact is that the intelligence of this country, the intelligence of Britain, the intelligence of the United Nations,
the intelligence all over the world said that there were weapons of mass destruction present in Iraq.
[With regard to the United States and Britain, the whole point is to determine whether their "intelligence" was
dishonest. The United Nations certainly never agreed with it; nor did "the world." The United Nations rejected the
evidence presented by the United States, and worldwide opposition to the war was more powerful than ever before in
history - much of it focused on the belief that the Bush Administration was lying.]
We knew that Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction before.
[Because we sold them to him.]
We still know that there was a weapons of mass destruction program.
[When? Just before the war? Or a program in some past year that had long since been dismantled? The former claim would
be a lie, the latter an irrelevance.]
He was evading the sanctions, and he had plans to reconstitute the program.
[Actually, of course, he had complied with the sanctions and informed the world of that fact, and complied with
investigations.]
We also knew that Saddam Hussein had uniquely invaded his neighbors, had uniquely supported terrorists and we all know
today that we are safer because he's been removed from power.
[Actually, there is nothing unique about invading one's neighbors. Just ask Haiti. Hussein did not support Al Quaeda in
any way. That lie has been endlessly debunked. And terrorist incidents have increased since the war started - which more
of us would know if the Bush Administration had not ceased releasing annual statistics on the matter. In any event, the
over 1600 US soldiers and 100,000 Iraqis who have been killed are not safer - they're not anything.]
So I believe that that individual report not only has been discredited
[by whom? when? where? on what grounds?]
but that the overall reasons for removing Saddam Hussein were broader than that, they were correct, and we're now safer
and certainly the people of Iraq are safer now that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power.
[For the points of view of some actual Iraqis on this, see www.uslaboragainstwar.org ]
MR. RUSSERT: I don't believe that the authenticity of this report has been discredited.
MR. MEHLMAN: I believe that the findings of the report, the fact that the intelligence was somehow fixed have been
totally discredited by everyone who's looked at it.
[Again, he means PRIOR TO emergence of this piece of evidence - a dubious assertion in itself.]
MR. RUSSERT: There--let me go back to another sentence from that report. "There was little discussion in Washington of
the aftermath after military action." Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, now head of the World Bank, said the
other day, "The war never ended," and the concern many Americans have, Mr. Mehlman, is that we now have 1,669 Americans
who've died bravely in Iraq, 1,532 of those after the president said major combat operations were over. We have 12,762
Americans wounded or injured, 12,000 of those after the president said major combat was over. This memo seems to suggest
that the head of British Intelligence told Prime Minister Blair that there was little discussion in Washington to plan
for the aftermath of military action.
MR. MEHLMAN: I would respectfully disagree with that finding. I think that there was clearly planning that occurred,
planning that occurred to deal with the results of the war. If you remember after the first Gulf War, whether it was the
breaching of the dams that we saw all over Iraq, that didn't happen. Whether it was the fires that we saw, that didn't
happen this past time. Plans were made for after the war. There's no question that there has been an insurgency. The
insurgents understand the stakes of the situation in Iraq. They understand that if we're successful, their efforts to
promote terrorism around the world, their efforts to defeat democracy and freedom will be hurt. And there's no
question-- therefore, we need to deal with these insurgents.
[Plans were clearly made to safeguard the oil, but that hardly addresses Russert's citation of figures of deaths. Nor
does Mehlman give any explanation of what in the heck he means by suggesting that Iraqis resisting the occupation are
trying to "promote terrorism around the world."]
But the president has mentioned repeatedly that he thinks every day about it and meets with the families of the men and
women who have given their lives in Iraq.
[Meets with them every day? How many families has he met with? More than one? Clearly he has not met with members of
Gold Star Families for Peace or Iraqi Veterans Against the War or Military Families Speak Out or Military Families
Against the War or Veterans for Peace. These organizations are working to end the war and are almost certainly not
comforted to hear that Bush thinks about "it."]
They've given their lives for an incredibly noble cause.
[Oil?]
We did plan for the future. There are some things you can plan for. There are some things that are harder to plan for,
but I believe we're doing a very important mission in Iraq, which is defeating the terrorists, promoting democracy and
you've seen throughout this spring what the effects of that democracy have been in other Arab nations.
[Again, the reference to "terrorists" appears to be an attempt to dishonestly connect Iraq to 9-11. Saudi Arabia, the
home of most of the 9-11 terrorists, is a US ally and the furthest thing from a democracy.]
MR. RUSSERT: The primary rationale given for the war, however, was the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. And
again I refer you to the memo of the prime minister's meeting. "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take
military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his
neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than half that of Libya, North Korea and Iran."
MR. MEHLMAN: Well, the president, I think, was responsible in saying we need to simultaneously prepare for war and also
try to avoid that war.
[But we now have official government minutes showing that he was not doing that. He was only telling us that he was
doing that. He was lying to the American people and to Congress.]
There were simultaneous efforts at the diplomatic stages that were made and yet at the same time it would have been
irresponsible for us to say we're going to wait and then plan for war later because we wouldn't have had as effective an
effort as we did to remove Saddam Hussein from power, so we needed to do both at the same time.
[The point is not that the Pentagon was planning how it would fight a war if it had to do so, but that Bush had already
determined to go to war and to lie about why it was necessary.]
I would also, though, disagree, as I said a moment ago, with the notion that Iraq was somehow less of a threat. Iran
and North Korea hadn't invaded their neighbors. Iran and North Korea hadn't used weapons of mass destruction. Iran and
North Korea hadn't, in the same way that Saddam Hussein had, been paying off suicide bombers in Israel and in the
Palestinian territories. Iran and North Korea are serious challenges. So was Saddam Hussein, and removing him makes the
world safer, makes America safer.
[So, the chairman of the Republican Party is better qualified than top intelligence officials to rank the members of
the "axis of evil"? Why, then was the bogus justification for attacking Iraq its fictional pursuit of nuclear weapons?
Meanwhile North Korea's actual possession of such weapons was not considered a danger? Please. And the comments about
Iraq invading neighbors are out of place. Iraq was not threatening to invade anyone. The United States invaded Iraq
while pretending that Iraq was threatening the United States. In the past, if the past is relevant, the United States
has invaded far more countries than Iraq has.]
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This article is from After Downing Street Dot Org. David Swanson is a co-founder of the website. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/