For those that need a quick refresher, The Dowing Street Memo blog gets right to the major point.
The Downing Street “Memo” is actually the minutes of a meeting, transcribed during a gathering of many of the British Prime Minister’s senior ministers on July 23, 2002. Published by The Sunday Times on May 1, 2005 this document was the first hard evidence from within the UK or US governments that exposed the truth about how the Iraq war began.
Considered a smoking gun when published because July 2002 was before Bush and Blair began their pitches to the UN, their respective legislatures, and the public on the need to enforce resolutions against Iraq and that were couched in the language of seeking inspections and sanctions and not war. The outrage over the memo died a reasonably quick death in the US. In the UK it figured in the later Iraq Inquiry that managed to interview UK government participants in the decision to go to war against Iraq, but the inquiry produced nothing but a report.
Now comes a document from April 2002, new to the public, that TPTB and MSM can dismiss as “nothing new,” “nothing we didn’t already know,” “so, what,” etc. Should they find that ignoring it — because The Daily Mail got it and DM is a rag — doesn’t fly and they feel compelled to respond to its publication.
(Note: US and UK publications have no problem picking up stories from DM when they concern crime and celebrity gossip.)
DM is a tabloid that publishes all sorts of crap and is politically conservative. Not a credible source, similar to The National Enquirer, until it is. Mindful of that, I pass this along FWIW, which may not be much. And only do so because the scan of the subject document appears to be authentic. Note that it was assigned a “Declassify on: 04-01-22” date. (My understanding is that such declassify dates are subject to revision and extension of the classification period of time.)
In one sense this is an infill document. Between what Paul O’Neill and others have told us about what they were privy to in 2001 and the July 2002 Downing Street memo. What makes it noteworthy IMO is that the memo is from Colin Powell, as well as being a documentation which always carries more weight than public tellings of recollections. Thus, almost a year before his UN appearance he was informed of the agenda to invade iraq and topple Saddam and how this was to be sold by Bush and Blair. That dynamic duo came up a bit short and Powell was dispatched to close the deal. This makes him every bit as culpable for the horror that was unleashed on the people of Iraq as Bush, Cheney, Blair, etc. (When contacted by DM wrt to the memo, Powell declined to comment.)
DM claims that the document was leaked to the reporters. If it’s authentic, it would have to be leaked as it is a classified document. But why leak to a conservative UK tabloid? Obviously anything that makes Blair look even worse would be of interest to them, even if he’s already been more or less discredited and/or dismissed by Labour. But the leaker probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Blair. The intent was to get it published. The “money shot” from the article is:
The memo was included in a batch of 30,000 emails which were received by Mrs Clinton on her private server when she was US Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013.
Proof, if authentic, that a clearly classified document was on Clinton’s server. Personally, that isn’t of much interest to me because I don’t hav much respect for the USG penchant to classify information that rightly belongs in the public domain.
A more intriguing question is why a 2002 classified memo was sent to Clinton. What need did she have for it? The Clinton-Blair relationship goes back a long way and Cherie Blair was lobbying Clinton on behalf of Qatar in 2010.
In a just world, the criminals that instigated the Iraq War based on lies that they knew were lies would be brought before tribunals. However, covering up crimes is also a crime. And shame on political partisans that claim otherwise when it’s one of their own that’s engaged in a cover-up.
Sigh — and none of this matters in the least to any American other than those that opposed invading and occupying Iraq, remain sickened by all the deaths, injuries, and destruction, the trillions of dollars squandered, and aren’t into forgiving or overlooking all those in government that made it happen.
Update: The Guardian – Chilcot under pressure to report after leaked Blair-Bush Iraq memo
Sir John Chilcot is facing renewed pressure over his inquiry into the Iraq war following the emergence of a leaked White House memo that appears to prove Tony Blair backed military action a year before seeking a vote in parliament.
The document shows a contrast between Blair’s public position in early 2002 that he was not proposing military action and the private opinion of the US that the British prime minister would “follow our lead”. …
Comforting to know that I’m not alone in dismissing the memo as a “nothingburger” or getting all defensive about it due to where it was published and the suspected source of the leak.
Update #2
According to The Daily Mail (so, caution advised), Tony Blair apologizes for Iraq War mistakesin a CNN interview.
…In the ‘trial by TV’, respected US political broadcaster Fareed Zakaria accuses him of being President Bush’s ‘poodle’ over the conflict. Blair’s confession comes a week after The Mail on Sunday published a bombshell White House memo revealing for the first time how Blair and Bush agreed a ‘deal in blood’ a year before the invasion.
…
The interview ends on a chummy note as Zakaria also apologizes for his support for the war. (I truly dislike all of these people and none of them should ever hold any position of authority anywhere.)