So, while Bush was telling the American people that he considered war with Iraq "a last resort," he actually had decided to invade regardless of Iraq's cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, according to the five-page memo of the Oval Office meeting reviewed by the New York Times.
The memo also reveals Bush conniving to deceive the American people and the world community by trying to engineer a provocation that would portray Hussein as the aggressor. Bush suggested painting a U.S. plane up in U.N. colors and flying it over Iraq with the goal of drawing Iraqi fire, the meeting minutes said.
"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo said about Bush's scheme. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach." [See Consortiumnews.com's "Time to Talk War Crimes."]
According to the British memo, Bush and Blair acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, nor were they likely to be found in the coming weeks, but that wouldn't get in the way of the U.S.-led invasion. [NYT, March 27, 2006]
Ousting the Inspectors
So, Bush clearly knew that Hussein had permitted the inspectors into Iraq to search suspected weapons sites. Bush also knew that he was the one who forced the inspectors to leave so the invasion could proceed in March 2003.
"Although the inspection organization was now operating at full strength and Iraq seemed determined to give it prompt access everywhere, the United States appeared as determined to replace our inspection force with an invasion army," the UN's chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, wrote in his memoir, Disarming Iraq.
In other words, neither the U.N. inspectors' negative WMD findings nor the Security Council's refusal to authorize force would stop Bush's invasion on March 19, 2003. [For more on Bush's pretexts for war in Iraq, see Consortiumnews.com's "President Bush, With the Candlestick""]
By late May 2003, however, the failure of Bush's own inspectors to find any WMD, compounded by the stirrings of a bloody Iraqi insurgency, left Bush and his advisers scrambling to refurbish old justifications for the war and to cobble together some new ones.
The two trailers came in handy, even though the evidence was always clear that the equipment was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, not biological agents.
Like other WMD evidence, however, the case of the trailers was stretched to serve Bush's political needs. Despite the field report debunking the bio-war claims - sent to Washington on May 27, 2003 - the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a misleading "white paper" on the alleged bio-labs on May 28.
Bush began citing the trailers as the conclusive WMD proof on May 29, 2003. "Those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons are wrong," Bush declared, referring to the mobile labs. "We found them."
By June 1, 2003, after simply reading the "white paper," I was able to post an analysis showing how shoddy and flimsy the CIA/DIA claims were. At the time, I was not aware of the field report, which had been stamped secret and shelved. [See Consortiumnews.com's "America's Matrix, Revisited."]
The Plame Case
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