Another British Memo: No Post-War Plan

Another memo has surfaced, which predates the legendary [and rug-shoved] Downing Street Memo by two days. Dated July 21, 2002, it discusses the vacuous black hole in the American's planning for post-war Occupation Iraq:

In its introduction, the memo "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" notes that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but adds that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it."

The July 21 memo was produced by Blair's staff in preparation for a meeting with his national security team two days later that has become controversial on both sides of the Atlantic since last month's disclosure of official notes summarizing the session.

In those meeting minutes -- which have come to be known as the Downing Street Memo -- British officials who had just returned from Washington said Bush and his aides believed war was inevitable and were determined to use intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and his relations with terrorists to justify invasion of Iraq.

The "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," said the memo -- an assertion attributed to the then-chief of British intelligence, and denied by U.S. officials and by Blair at a news conference with Bush last week in Washington. Democrats in Congress led by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), however, have scheduled an unofficial hearing on the matter for Thursday.

Now, disclosure of the memo written in advance of that meeting -- and other British documents recently made public -- show that Blair's aides were not just concerned about Washington's justifications for invasion but also believed the Bush team lacked understanding of what could happen in the aftermath.

In a section titled "Benefits/Risks," the July 21 memo states, "Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."

Saying that "we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective," the memo's authors point out, "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." The authors add, "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

And so more documentation arises implicating Washington in the crime of planning an Invasion without any strategy to secure the volitile country afterward, the work of convincing the world that this was reasonable to be done by shaping any available intelligence around that desire.

There are, clearly, documents in the Department of Defense archives, probably on Rumsfeld's desk. If the British have these documents, the US has their version. There are minutes of these American meetings; dated. There are documents here in America outlining the secret planning of the illegal invasion of Iraq. Certainly locked away and out of reach, but they still exist.

The crime of the Iraq war was not that we went in to Iraq to remove a treacherous dictator; it's that the American people were manipulated and twisted in the post-9/11 emotional fallout in order to do so. The crime is in the methodology of manipulation; and these documents are slowly, vitally, back-tracking that method. We will discover what we've known all along: that the Invasion was a political push riding the waves of 9/11 despair.

-----
UPDATE
The Administration denies the poor planning for the aftermath of the Invasion. They apparently think that the mass-looting that occured immediately after, the factions of tribal resistence, the continued insurgency, the need to supplement combat soldiers with US National Guardsmen, the multi-billion dollar contractor swindle, and all the other significant problems in Iraq were totally expected. It is too bad, then, that the apparent plan they claim to have had doesn't seem to have materialized yet.

Also:
Salon has a good brief analysis of the memo here, along with the realization that Blair signed on to the invasion of Iraq at a summit in Texas in April 2002:

The briefing paper was prepared for participants in advance of the now-famous July 23, 2002 meeting, held at Prime Minister Tony Blair's residence, 10 Downing Street in London. According to the Times report, the briefing paper confirms that Blair had actually signed off on Bush's plan to invade Iraq back in April, 2002, at a summit in Crawford Texas. The two men then spent the next 11 months working to formulate a justification for the invasion -- because, as the briefing paper stressed, it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make the invasion legal.

Here is a quote from Blair from April 6, 2002, the time of this summit:

Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair agreed that Iraq must allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country but papered over their differences over the possible use of American force against Iraq, in an effort to display a picture of unity.

The president said he explained to Blair that the “policy of my government is the removal” of Saddam and that all options are on the table.

Blair told reporters, “It has always been our policy that Iraq would be better without Saddam Hussein. How we now proceed in this situation ... that is a matter that is open for discussions.”

Added Mr. Bush: “We support regime change.”

U.S. military action against Saddam risks the revolt of Arab nations currently supporting the war on terrorism.

The violence between Israelis and Palestinians has thrown the region into turmoil and further polarized the Arabs, which makes an American military move against Iraq politically more unlikely, with or without its allies, says CBS News correspondent Joie Chen.