THE MANNING MEMO

Well, well – here comes yet another secret memo revealing how George W's Iraq attack has been, from the very start, a war of lies.

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THE MANNING MEMO
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Well, well – here comes yet another secret memo revealing how George W’s Iraq attack has been, from the very start, a war of lies.

You might recall that shortly before the March 2003 invasion, Bush was telling us that if Saddam Hussein did not give up his weapons of mass destruction, Iraq would face war. But earlier, in a January 31 closed door meeting, Bush had informed his British buddy Tony Blair that the attack would take place even if no WMDs were found. Indeed, George and Tony candidly conceded that such weapons were not likely to be found.

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This bit of deliberate deception is unveiled in a confidential five-page memo written by David Manning, Blair’s top foreign policy advisor, who had participated in the meeting. The Manning memo confirms the substance of the now-famous Downing Street memo from 2002, in which other Blair aides reported that Bush was manipulating intelligence and facts in order to support his push to invade Iraq.

Manning records that both Bush and Blair were uptight that the WMDs were not going to be found, for this totally undermined their public rationale for the invasion. So George W offered another fabrication to give them an excuse to attack. He suggested that the U.S. would paint one of our own surveillance planes in the colors of the United Nations and fly it over Iraq, hoping that Saddam would be provoked into shooting it down. If so, the U.S. and Brits could invade, claiming that they were retaliating for Saddam’s attack on the UN.

Ultimately, Bush and Blair chose to stick with the lie that Iraq had WMDs, apparently assuming that the war would end with a quick and popular victory, a new Iraqi democracy would spring up, and no one would remember all that WMD stuff.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Meanwhile, 2,300 Americans have died, Iraq is a bloody mess, and George W says his war of lies will continue at least until 2009.

Sources:
“Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says,” The New York Times, March 27, 2006.

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