MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.If this document is authentic there are some serious and obvious implications, namely that the invasion of Iraq was engaged under false pretenses.
The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.
The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.
The Times previously released another leaked document, the Downing Street Memo, in which Britain's head of military intelligence reported that 8 months before the US had officially commited to military action in Iraq that in Washington "military action was now seen as inevitable" and that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of removing Saddam by military action with the justification of links to terrorism and WMD's.
Update - Here is a copy of the document in question
2 comments:
Hume, you should read this timeline of the lead-up to the Iraqi War (based on what we know now):
http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/muriel/path_of_war_timeline_613.htm
It helped me to get all the outrages fresh in my mind.
Yeah, I read them.
There's a part in one of the documents that I've been meaning to post about, where the British say they are facing different issue of public opinion than in the US. I thought to myself, "yeah, their public and press holds gov't somewhat accountable is the difference"
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