The Elephant
I honestly don't know why there is any question that the Downing St Memo is the most important historical document to emerge showing that Bush and company took us into Iraq on false pretenses. It's true that there have been many hints --- the biggest of which is that, uh, there weren't any fucking WMD --- but this is clear proof that they lied prior to that. I'm not sure what Michael Kinsley is saying here, but I agree with Kevin that it's absurd to think that the meeting minutes of the highest levels of our closest military ally were simple impressions of Bush's body language or something. It is a full-on game plan for obfuscation and "rolling out the product" that proves they knew that Iraq wasn't a threat.
Now, it's true that many of us knew that already. I wrote back in September of 2002 over on Eschaton:
I don't object to going into Iraq because I think Saddam doesn't want nukes. Of course he does. So do a lot of people, including al Qaeda. And a lot of unstable regimes already have them, like the countries of the former Soviet Union and Pakistan. I object because I don't believe there is any new evidence that he's on the verge of getting them or that he had anything to do with 9/11, or that he’s crazy because he gassed his own people (without our objection at the time), or that he’s just plain so evil that we simply must invade without delay --- all of which have been presented as reasons over the past few weeks. There are reasons why we are planning to invade Iraq, but they have nothing to do with the reasons stated and are based upon political and ideological not security goals.
I particularly object because I deeply mistrust the people who are insisting that Saddam presents an urgent danger because they have been agitating for invasion and regime change, offering a variety of rationales, for 11 years. Pardon me for being skeptical but there is an entire cottage industry in the GOP devoted to the destruction of Saddam for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with an imminent threat to the US. Until they concocted this bogus 9/11 connection, even they never claimed that the threat was to the US, but to Israel, moderate Arabs and the oil reserves.
I very much object because among these obsessives are the authors of the Bush Doctrine, which is nothing more than a warmed over version of the PNAC defense policy document that was based upon Cheney's 1992 defense dept. draft laying out the neocon case for ensuring the continued status of the US as the only superpower after the cold war. They did not take the threat of terrorism into account when they formulated this strategy and have made no adjustments since the threat emerged. Instead they are cynically using the fear created by 9/11 to advance goals that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism and in fact will make another attack more likely. We will not be able to protect ourselves against another 9/11 by asserting a doctrine of unilateral preventive war in Iraq or anywhere else.
I'm not an insider at the pentagon nor do I have any connections with the intelligence establishment. But I'm a political junkie who obsessively follows this stuff --- and who had made it my business to investigate the writings of the neocon faction of the Republican establishment. Most Americans in September of 2002 were still in a state of shock, or felt that we couldn't take any chances, or believed that Bush and company must know something that a broken down nobody blogger in Santa Monica California couldn't possibly know. I was told by more than one Democratic friend of mine that I was being ridiculously arrogant to be so sure that they weren't holding back important information for security reasons.
But, you know, I grew up in a period in which the government repeatedly and blatantly lied about a war in which friends of mine died and that tore the country in two in ways that I'm seeing mirrored today. I have not had the illusion that one should "trust" the government in these things since I was in high school. And this group made McNamara and his best and the brightest pals look like open books. If there was ever a case to be made for open government and transparency it was with the neocons.
It is obvious that the political media had access to the same information I did, and much much more. Bob "muckraker" Woodward was inside the planning rooms in late 2001 when the administration was agitating for the war. Wolf Blitzer could get anyone he wanted on the phone. They knew. But I wrote about what I could see and discern and they didn't. As Atrios says in his post today, blogs did their best, but we all knew we had slightly less influence than a lone protestor on a freeway off ramp. Millions of people in the streets all over the world could barely get the press to look up from their safari suit fittings --- and the bosses all told the kewl kidz that this was not a story they wanted flogged.
The fact of the matter is that the media are part of the political establishment, as as such, had as much of a stake in making the case for the war as the administration did, despite the fact that many of them knew very well there was no threat. They couldn't wait to go to war. They were intoxicated by bloodlust and they sold that bloodlust like it was the best reality show in history --- "9/11: America's Revenge" and they were right. It was a hell of a show.
All of this we know and have known for some time. But that doesn't mean that there is no story now. Indeed, the Downing Street Memo presents a chance for the press to redeem itself; this isn't the end of the story. So far, it has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into even broaching the subject of what this administration has done and their own complicity in it. They may never be able to admit all that. But in that it officially documents the fact that the administration knew there was no threat and knew there was no connection to terrorism, the Downing Street Memo gives the press the chance to ask, finally, why we really invaded Iraq.
Have any of you been at a social gathering in which this question comes up? Have you felt the palpable discomfort? Nobody really knows. Those that adhere to the "CIA fucked up" rationale can't explain Downing Street. Those who think you had to back the government in a time of war, are visibly discomfitted by the fact that we never found any WMD. Flypaper is crap. The amount of money we are spedning is becoming salient. The project looks endless.
I speculated back in September of 2002 that the neocon faction was pushing its American Empire wet dream and using 9/11 as an excuse. Others believe that in the grand sweep of things we invaded to place permanent military bases to protect the oil fields.(Ann Coulter says "why shouldn't we invade for oil? We need oil.") Still others think we needed to show some muscle and Afghanistan just wasn't sexy enough. Was it Israel? I wrote the other day that it now appears that Bush may have bribed Blair into invading Iraq by promising that he'd hold back just long enough to cripple al Qaeda and keep them from blowing up London --- something which the evidence suggests that Bush and his cronies really had no interest in. And then there's the racist and revenge motives.
We really don't know, do we? Perhaps it was all those things. Which would then raise another important question. How is it possible for the United States of America in 2003 to invade and occupy another country for a handful of different, unstated reasons? What kind of fucked up process could have the president with one reason for invading, the vice president another, the Secretary of Defense yet another --- and the congress and the press simply signing off on official lies?
These are the big questions that the Downing St Memo has opened up. Yes, we already knew the intelligence was fixed, we knew they understood that Saddam was no threat, we knew they lied to the American people and we knew that they intended to go to war no matter what. But we still don't know for sure why they did all that. Until we do, I don't think we will be able to figure out how to deal with it.
Update: To answer Atrios' question, and in keeping with this post, I would submit that the pithy way to frame this is by asking the question: "Why did we invade Iraq?"
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