88 members of Congress call on Bush about secret memo

Poststructural Pub
1

(From the secret memo thread)

Well, the story about that secret UK memo indicating Bush fixed intelligence regarding WMDs and lied to America might not have shown up on your TV, but that doesn’t mean members of Congress haven’t found out about it. The truth about Bush’s lie is gathering steam now… stay tuned.

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Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for answers on secret Iraq plan

RAW STORY
May 5, 2005

Eighty-eight members of Congress have signed a letter authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) calling on President Bush to answer questions about a secret U.S.-UK agreement to attack Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

In a letter, Conyers and other members say they are disappointed the mainstream media has not touched the revelations.

“Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the United States was too busy with wall-to-wall coverage of a “runaway bride” to cover a bombshell report out of the British newspapers,” Conyers writes. “The London Times reports that the British government and the United States government had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in 2002, before authorization was sought for such an attack in Congress, and had discussed creating pretextual justifications for doing so.”

“The Times reports, based on a newly discovered document, that in 2002 British Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a meeting in which he expressed his support for “regime change” through the use of force in Iraq and was warned by the nation’s top lawyer that such an action would be illegal,” he adds. “Blair also discussed the need for America to “create” conditions to justify the war.”

The members say they are seeking an inquiry.

“This should not be allowed to fall down the memory hole during wall-to-wall coverage of the Michael Jackson trial and a runaway bride,” he remarks. “To prevent that from occuring, I am circulating the following letter among my House colleagues and asking them to sign on to it.”

The letter follows.

May 5, 2005

The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States of America The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We write because of troubling revelations in the Sunday London Times apparently confirming that the United States and Great Britain had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in the summer of 2002, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action. While various individuals have asserted this to be the case before, including Paul O’Neill, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Richard Clarke, a former National Security Council official, they have been previously dismissed by your Administration. However, when this story was divulged last weekend, Prime Minister Blair’s representative claimed the document contained “nothing new.” If the disclosure is accurate, it raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own Administration.

The Sunday Times obtained a leaked document with the minutes of a secret meeting from highly placed sources inside the British Government. Among other things, the document revealed:

  • Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a July 2002 meeting, at which he discussed military options, having already committed himself to supporting President Bush’s plans for invading Iraq.

  • British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that the case for war was “thin” as “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran.”

  • A separate secret briefing for the meeting said that Britain and America had to “create” conditions to justify a war.

  • A British official “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, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

As a result of this recent disclosure, we would like to know the following:

  1. Do you or anyone in your Administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?

  2. Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain’s commitment to invade prior to this time?

  3. Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?

  4. At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?

  5. Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to “fix” the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?

We have of course known for some time that subsequent to the invasion there have been a variety of varying reasons proffered to justify the invasion, particularly since the time it became evident that weapons of mass destruction would not be found. This leaked document - essentially acknowledged by the Blair government - is the first confirmation that the rationales were shifting well before the invasion as well.

Given the importance of this matter, we would ask that you respond to this inquiry as promptly as possible. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Members who have already signed letter:
Neil Abercrombie
Brian Baird
Tammy Baldwin
Xavier Becerra
Shelley Berkley
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Sanford Bishop
Earl Blumenauer
Corrine Brown
Sherrod Brown
G.K. Butterfield
Emanuel Cleaver
James Clyburn
John Conyers
Jim Cooper
Elijah Cummings
Danny Davis
Peter DeFazio
Diana DeGette
Bill Delahunt
Rosa DeLauro
Lloyd Doggett
Sam Farr
Bob Filner
Harold Ford, Jr.
Barney Frank
Al Green
Raul Grijalva
Louis Gutierrez
Alcee Hastings
Maurice Hinchey
Rush Holt
Jay Inslee
Sheila Jackson Lee
Jessie Jackson Jr.
Marcy Kaptur
Patrick Kennedy
Dale Kildee
Carolyn Kilpatrick
Dennis Kucinich
William Lacy Clay
Barbara Lee
John Lewis
Zoe Lofgren
Donna M. Christensen
Carolyn Maloney
Ed Markey
Carolyn McCarthy
Jim McDermott
James McGovern
Cynthia McKinney
Martin Meehan
Kendrick Meek
Gregory Meeks
Michael Michaud
George Miller
Gwen S. Moore
James Moran
Jerrold Nadler
Grace Napolitano
James Oberstar
John Olver
Major Owens
Frank Pallone
Donald Payne
Charles Rangel
Bobby Rush
Bernie Sanders
Linda Sanchez
Jan Schakowsky
Jose Serrano
Ike Skelton
Louise Slaughter
Hilda Solis
Pete Stark
Ellen Tauscher
Bennie Thompson
Edolphus Towns
Stephanie Tubbs Jones
Chris Van Hollen
Nydia Velazquez
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Maxine Waters
Diane Watson
Melvin Watt
Robert Wexler
Lynn Woolsey
David Wu
Albert R. Wynn

2

They may have to wait a while for a reply. He’s not in at the moment.

3

Yea boy… and he’s gunna be pissed off something fierce when he gets back too. :astonished:

4

I don’t see my Congressional delegation on the list. They just as wells sign it. Probably not popular with their constituents.

5

I’m sure there’s more names on it by now, this article is from 5 days ago.

6

I heard no mention of this in the days before the UK General Election, yet you’d imagine, given the unpopularity of the war here, it would have been grist to the Conservative’s and Liberal Democrat’s mills.

If Blair is forced out (eventually) over this, we’ve still got a Labour Government for the next 4-5 years.

7

Timing is everything; if this was exposed sooner it might have had time to make an impact. Something like this usually takes a little time for everyone to investigate a bit before they jump on.

It seems like you guys in the UK ran the risk of voting the conservatives in if you vote Blair out. I don’t know what chances the Liberal Democrats have, but the whole thing strikes me as counter-intuitive voting. Now it looks like Blair might be forced to resign – perhaps a better route. We on the other hand have Dick Cheney standing by to replace Bush. Many of us believe he’s been the actual president all this time anyway – so there will be little change. But exposing the Bush Administration for its lies is something we need to do either way.

If voters realize what happened it will hopefully have an impact on their choice next time around. But it’s hard for me to guess how people will react, and what sort of spin corporate media will use to make it all seem palatable to clueless Americans who rely on corporate media for information.

8

Rule #1 of politics: Conduct your affairs such that you can easily claim ignorance and feign outrage if the public ever catches on.

Congress has tons of intelligence information at its disposal; someone would be very naive to think that congress was duped into anything. Hell, I knew WMDs were a red herring and I don’t have access to 1/1000th of the stuff congress does. Really people, those 88 congresspeople are just covering their own butts.

9

Coooool. Look at all the conservatives on that list. ahem …

10

Conservatives aren’t interested in truth, if they were – they wouldn’t believe themselves.

11

I thought the first rule of politics was, “never get caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy”

anyway

here’s food for thought…I think the surest indication that the whole deal was not as diabolically engineered as the conspiracy theorists are saying it was is that we didn’t find any. Had we gone in knowing that there wasn’t anything to find we’d’ve imported something and “found” it.

Actually, had the gov’t’s story been right all along, and things were legitimately found there would be those in the media claiming that we did just that anyway.

12

Goes over big in your amen corner there in SF, I guess, to say things like that. Why don’t you tell us how all Blacks think? Or all Christians? Or all Jews, while you’re at it?

13

Wow, I didn’t realize Conservatives were an ethnic or religious group. This changes the whole picture. :boggle:

Thanks for clearing that up and setting us all straight there, Ender.

14

And what is the truth? The truth is what you hear from your favorite authority, of course And anything else you hear, all you have to do is go into deep denial. After all, as any good attorney knows, there is no right or wrong. It’s just which ever way you choose to argue it, and how successful you are at selling your version. :wink:

15

Still don’t get it, or you just being cute? Ascribing monolithic thinking to any group to that degree of pejorative characteristics undermines your credibility, perhaps once and for all. Maybe you should write a book to describe exactly what the conservatives ALL think because obviously, only you (and God) know what is in their minds.

Hey, then, if you and your pal Chomsky gain power, you can establish a litmus test and have 'em executed! After all, they don’t believe in truth like you! You could even stamp a big “C” on their forehead. Yeah, that’s the ticket! You know, you really should have been around in the early 90s in France. 1790s, that is.

PS. I freely admit to using the “L” word on occasion but nothing like this.

16

Actually, there’s evidence that the US attempted to do just that, but they kept getting busted. The materials they “found” would be scrutinized for point of origin and the Military would have to have been very careful on account of so much suspicion that they might try such a thing. An example of how closely other countries were watching is evidenced in the following article.

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U.S. Unloading WMD in Iraq

Tehran Times
March 13, 2004

TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) Over the past few days, in the wake of the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing of Iraqís interim constitution, there have been reports that U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq.

A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that U.S. forces, with the help of British forces stationed in southern Iraq, had made extensive efforts to conceal their actions.

He added that the cargo was unloaded during the night as attention was still focused on the aftermath of the deadly bombings in Karbala and the signing of Iraqís interim constitution.

The source said that in order to avoid suspicion, ordinary cargo ships were used to download the cargo, which consisted of weapons produced in the 1980s and 1990s.

(Click headline for full article)

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I think the US thought it would find something, but they had to start coming up with a different spin when they realized that Saddam had actually destroyed all of Iraq’s WMDs to take away any pretext for US invasion. Iraq’s weapon’s chief, Kammal, indicated just that in his affidavit to US intelligence after defecting to Lebanon. Powell left that part of Kammal’s testimony out of his case for invading Iraq presented to the UN Security Council of course.

17

Damn, I let my subscription to the Tehran Times lapse and missed that valuable piece of true fact…

18

Still don’t get it, or you just being cute? Ascribing monolithic thinking to any group to that degree of pejorative characteristics undermines your credibility

Dude, “Conservatism” describes a political ideology.

Ideology is monolithic thinking.

19

Here’s an interesting questionnaire, put out by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

http://typology.people-press.org/typology/

Hey! Guess what? I’m a liberal. (Who’dathunkit?)

Best wishes,
Jerry

20

I’m with Weeks on this one. Too much kneejerk stereotyping, ad hominum dirt throwing with no useful information exchanged.

Simon, JGilder, please go stand in the corner with Walden and Lorenzo.

Best wishes,
Jerry