PERSONAL SECRET UK EYES ONLY
IRAQ: CONDITIONS FOR MILITARY ACTION (A Note by Officials)
Summary
Ministers are invited to:
(1) Note the latest position on US military planning and timescales for possible action.
(2) Agree that the objective of any military action 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 international security, and abiding by its international obligations on WMD.
(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.
(4) Note the potentially long lead times involved in equipping UK Armed Forces to undertake operations in the Iraqi theatre and agree that the MOD should bring forward proposals for the procurement of Urgent Operational Requirements under cover of the lessons learned from Afghanistan and the outcome of SR2002.
(5) Agree to the establishment of an ad hoc group of officials under Cabinet Office Chairmanship to consider the development of an information campaign to be agreed with the US.
Courtesy of ICH http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9112.htm
Now let's add to this boiling soup the latest Washington Post ABC News Poll which finds that 58% of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling both the economy and the situation in Iraq.
And now add a pinch of Editorial dissent whereas Greg Mitchell , who as editor of *Editor & Publisher* and is aware of the movement of such things, wrote on Wednesday that "For whatever reason, it's possible that more than a few [U.S.] editorial pages may finally be on the verge of saying 'enough is enough.' "
Mitchell goes on to write ; " Suddenly there seems to be something in the air -- the smell of death? Or something in the water -- blood? In any case, this past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war .... "
" There were numerous signs of editorial unrest in the past week, too many to cite. The *Sun* of Baltimore, in its Memorial Day editorial, declared: "If the president truly wished to honor their memory, he would demonstrate to the nation that the government that has botched so much of the war at least has some inkling as to how to draw it to a successful conclusion -- so that the dead will not have died in vain." The *Minneapolis Star-Tribune* called Iraq "an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns. . . . President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes."
But perhaps the most powerful denunciation came from an unlikely source, the *Seattle Post-Intelligencer*. An editorial in that Hearst paper this past Wednesday, just after Memorial Day, really thundered, and deserves reprinting here:
"President Bush was among the 260,000 graves at Arlington National Cemetery when he said it. But it was clear Monday that the president was referring to the more than 1,650 Americans killed to date in Iraq when he said, 'We must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives; by defeating the terrorists.'
"Bush insists on clinging to the thoroughly discredited notion that there was any connection between the old Iraqi regime -- no matter how lawless and brutal -- and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"U.S. military action against an Afghan regime that harbored al-Qaida was a legitimate response to the 9/11 attacks. The invasion of Iraq was not.
"As of Memorial Day 2003, Bush had declared major combat operations at an end, predicted that weapons of mass destruction would be found and that U.S. forces were in the process of stabilizing Iraq. One hundred sixty U.S. troops had died.
"The U.S. death toll has grown more than tenfold. No weapons of mass destruction were found. More than 700 Iraqis have been killed since Iraq's new government was formed April 28.
"Bush said of the insurgents at a news conference yesterday, 'I believe the Iraqi government is plenty capable of dealing with them.'
"Of course, this is the same president that assured the world that military intervention in Iraq was a last resort and that the United States would make every effort to avoid war through diplomacy. Giving lie to that as well is the so-called Downing Street War Memo, which shows that as early as July 2002, 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD . . . the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.' "
