Confidential memo reveals US plan to provoke an invasion of Iraq

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be "brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president".

The five-page document, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, and copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, and the UK's ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines how Bush told Blair he had decided on a start date for the war.

Text taken from here.

Middle East Quartet - a hypocrite institution

The Middle East Quartet includes the US, EU, Russia and the UN. It was formed in 2002 to seek "comprehensive security reform," mediate the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," address Occupied Palestine's deepening humanitarian crisis, among other stated objectives.

The Quartet identified 2008 as a crucial year to meet specific goals and obligations. So far they're unfulfilled with no prospect they will be in the new year. It prompted The Group's critical report with recommendations going forward for "swift" and "dramatic" action so far not undertaken. Otherwise "it will be necessary to question what the future is for the Middle East Quartet."

Middle East Online contributor Rami Khouri said "Let the Quartet Die (for) provid(ing) cover for Israeli colonialism and its American guardians." Instead of being an "impartial and decisive instrument of peace-making," it served as a "fig leaf designed to hide American dominance of a diplomatic process" primarily to serve Israeli interests. It's been a talking shop with no teeth and acted against, not for, Palestinian rights. It was highlighted by its failure:

• to recognize Hamas' democratic election;
  
• not demand that Israel respect international law;
  
• halt its illegal settlement expansions;
  
• refrain from using excessive force;
  
• allow free movement and access; and
  
• end its illegal occupation.
  

Khouri called the Quartet "a dishonest institution" and its special envoy Tony Blair "the Diplomatic Olympics Gold Medal Winner for Political Fraudulence." It should announce that it "failed (and must) withdraw immediately," end its charade, and prevent any more damage than it's already done.

Other Quartet critics voice similar sentiments. Among them John Dugard, the UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on Palestine. He accused the Quartet of being "heavily influenced" by the US. It "does itself little good by remaining" one of its members. America has done nothing to protect Palestinian civilians. It fails to address Israel's violations of international human rights law, and it "should be playing the role of the mediator," not siding with Fatah over Hamas.

Former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Quartet envoy Alvaro de Soto was even harsher in his End of Mission Report, shortly before he stepped down. At first it was confidential, but it's now available online, and it's damning.

He said he was "encouraged to be candid" and he was. That Quartet (and UN) policy failed because it one-sidedly supports US and Israeli interests. It undermines a legitimate peace process and any hope for an independent Palestinian state. He urged the Secretary-General to leave it and said history will hold him accountable.

He condemned the Quartet for not recognizing the Hamas government and said it was "transformed from a negotiation-promoting foursome guided by a common document (the Road Map) into a body that was all-but imposing sanctions on a freely elected government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue."

He called the consequences of the Quartet position "devastating:"

• creating intolerable conditions on the ground;
  
• achieving "precisely the opposite effect" of its mandate by allowing Israel's oppressive occupation;
  
• letting hundreds of civilians (to be killed) in sustained heavy incursions and (destroyed) infrastructure, some of it wanton such as the surgical strikes on (Gaza's) only power plant."
  
• America dominates the Quartet. It, in turn, "take(s) all pressure off Israel (and) focus(es only) on the failings of Hamas." After two years as Quartet envoy, De Soto concluded that it failed as a diplomatic instrument. "As a practical matter, the Quartet is pretty much a group of friends of the US - and the US doesn't feel the need to consult closely with (it) except when it suits it."

Text taken from the article The Quartet's Hypocrisy and Failure in Occupied Palestine

Britain Leaves Iraq in Shame. The US Won't Go So Quietly

by Seumas Milne
Global Research, December 12, 2008
The Guardian

Obama was elected on the back of revulsion at Bush's war, but greater pressure will be needed to force a full withdrawal.

If British troops are indeed withdrawn from Iraq by next June, it will signal the end of the most shameful and disastrous episode in modern British history. Branded only last month by Lord Bingham, until recently Britain's most senior law lord, as a "serious violation of international law", the aggression against Iraq has not only devastated an entire country and left hundreds of thousands dead - it has also been a political and military humiliation for the invading powers.

In the case of Britain, which marched into a sovereign state at the bidding of an extreme and reckless US administration, the war has been a national disgrace which has damaged the country's international standing. Britain's armed forces will withdraw from Iraq with dishonour. Not only were they driven from Basra city last summer under cover of darkness by determined resistance, just as British colonial troops were forced out of Aden 40 years ago - and Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places, before that. But they leave behind them an accumulation of evidence of prisoner beatings, torture and killings, for which only one low-ranking soldier, Corporal Payne, has so far been singled out for punishment.

It's necessary to spell out this brutal reality as a corrective to the official tendency to minimise or normalise the horror of what has evidently been a criminal enterprise - enthusiastically supported by David Cameron and William Hague, it should be remembered, as well as Tony Blair and his government - and a reminder of the dangers of escalating the war that can't be won in Afghanistan. It was probably just as well that the timetable for British withdrawal from Iraq was given in a background military briefing, after Gordon Brown's earlier schedule for troop reductions was vetoed by George Bush.

But in any case, in the wake of Barack Obama's election on a partial withdrawal ticket, the latest plans look a good deal more credible. They are also welcome, of course, even if several hundred troops are to stay behind to train Iraqis. It would be far better both for Britain and Iraq if there were a clean break and a full withdrawal of all British forces in preparation for a comprehensive public inquiry into the Iraq catastrophe. Instead, and in a pointer to the shape of things to come, British troops at Basra airport are being replaced by US forces.

Meanwhile, the real meaning of last month's security agreement between the US and Iraqi governments is becoming clearer, as Obama's administration-in-waiting briefs the press and officials highlight the small print. This "status of forces agreement", which replaces the UN's shotgun mandate for the occupation forces at the end of this month, had been hailed by some as an unequivocal deal to end the occupation within three years.

There's no doubt that Iraq's Green Zone government, under heavy pressure from its own people and neighbours such as Iran, extracted significant concessions from US negotiators to the blanket occupation licence in the original text. The final agreement does indeed stipulate that US forces will withdraw by the end of 2011, that combat troops will leave urban areas by July next year, contractors and off-duty US soldiers will be subject to Iraqi law and that Iraqi territory cannot be used to attack other countries.

The fact that the US was forced to make such commitments reflects the intensity of both Iraqi and American public opposition to the occupation, the continuing Iraqi resistance war of attrition against US forces, and Obama's tumultuous election on a commitment to pull out all combat troops in 16 months. Even so, the deal was denounced as treason - for legitimising foreign occupation and bases - by the supporters of the popular Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, resistance groups and the influential Association of Muslim Scholars.

And since his November triumph, Obama has gone out of his way to emphasise his commitment to maintaining a "residual force" for fighting "terrorism", training and protection of US civilians - which his security adviser Richard Danzig estimated could amount to between 30,000 and 55,000 troops.

Briefings by Pentagon officials have also made clear this residual force could remain long after 2011. It turns out that the new security agreement can be ditched by either side, while the Iraqi government is fully entitled to invite US troops to remain, as explained in the accompanying "strategic framework agreement", so long as its bases or presence are not defined as "permanent". And given that the current Iraqi government would be unlikely to survive a week without US protection, such a request is a fair bet. Combat troops can also be "re-missioned" as "support units", it transpires, and even the last-minute concession of a referendum on the agreement next year will not, the Iraqi government now says, be binding.

None of this means there won't be a substantial withdrawal of troops from Iraq after Obama takes over the White House next month. But how far that withdrawal goes will depend on the kind of pressure he faces both at home and in Iraq. The US establishment clearly remains committed to a long-term stewardship of Iraq. The Iraqi government is at this moment negotiating secret 20-year contracts with US and British oil majors to manage 90% of the country's oil production. The struggle to end US occupation and control of the country is far from won.

The same goes for the wider shadow of the war on terror, of which Iraq has been the grisly centrepiece. Its legacy has been strategic overreach and failure for the US: from the rise of Iran as a regional power, the deepening imbroglio of the Afghan war, the advance of Hamas and Hizbullah and threat of implosion in Pakistan - quite apart from the advance of the nationalist left in Latin America and the growing challenge from Russia and China. But at its heart has been the demonstration of American weakness in Iraq, the three trillion-dollar war that helped drive the US economy into crisis.

No wonder the US elite has wanted a complete change of direction and Bush was last week reduced to mumbling his regrets about the "intelligence failure in Iraq". For Obama, the immediate foreign policy tests are clear: if he delivers on Iraq, negotiates in Afghanistan and engages with Iran, he will start to justify the global hopes that have been invested in him. If not, he will lay the ground for a new phase of conflict with the rest of the world.

Blair, Bush could face probe at The Hague

TONY Blair could face the prospect of an International Criminal Court investigation for alleged coalition war crimes in Iraq.

The court's chief prosecutor said at the weekend that he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the British Prime Minister and US President George Bush could one day face charges at The Hague.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged Arab countries, particularly Iraq, to sign up to the court to enable allegations against the West to be pursued. Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations said that his country was actively considering signing up.

The US has refused to accept the court's jurisdiction and is unlikely to hand over any of its citizens to face trial. However, Britain has signed up and the Government has indicated its willingness to tackle accusations of war crimes against a number of British soldiers.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo said it was frustrating that the court was viewed in the Arab world as biased in favour of the West.

Asked whether he could envisage a situation in which Mr Blair and Mr Bush found themselves in the dock answering charges of war crimes in Iraq, he replied: "Of course, that could be a possibility … whatever country joins the court can know that whoever commits a crime in their country could be prosecuted by me."

Human rights lawyers remain sceptical about whether charges will ever be brought.

Some Muslim countries have criticised what they claim is the court's reluctance to deal with offences committed by Western governments. Sudan has called for the court to investigate coalition actions in Iraq.

Reported here.