The Downing Street memo (or the Downing Street Minutes), sometimes described by critics of the Iraq War as the smoking gun memo, is the note of a 23 July 2002 secret meeting[1][2] of senior British government, defence and intelligence figures discussing the build-up to the war, which included direct reference to classified United States policy of the time.
The memo, written by Downing Street foreign policy aide Matthew Rycroft, recorded the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) as expressing the view following his recent visit to Washington that "[George W.] Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.
[5] As this issue began to be covered by American media (Los Angeles Times on 12 May 2005, The Washington Post on 13 May 2005), two other main allegations stemming from the memo arose: that the UN weapons inspection process was manipulated to provide a legal pretext for the war, and that pre-war air strikes were deliberately ramped up in order to soften Iraqi infrastructure in preparation for war, prior to the October U.S. Senate vote permitting the invasion.
A resolution of inquiry was filed by Representative Barbara Lee, which would request that the President and the State Department turn over all relevant information with regard to US policy towards Iraq.
It deals with the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, and comes at a point at which it becomes clear to those attending, that US President George W. Bush intended to remove Saddam Hussein from power by force.
The minutes run through the military options and then consider the political strategy in which an appeal for support from the international community and from domestic opinion would be most likely to be positively received.
There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.The British analysis of US policy is also stated elsewhere in the minutes: The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime.
The situation might of course change.The main sections covering the ultimatum are: The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors.
It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.The minutes also outlines potential risks of an invasion of Iraq: For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began?
and the date of the memo, 23 July 2002, contradicts the official White House position that President Bush did not finally decide to carry out the invasion of March 2003 until after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the administration's case to the United Nations Security Council, in a speech on 5 February 2003.
Another paragraph has been taken to show that Geoff Hoon believed the timing of the war was intended to influence American elections: The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime.
In response to the Bush administration's refusal to answer the congressional delegation's questions, Conyers et al. considered sending a fact-finding mission to the UK.
On 16 June 2005, Conyers presided over an unofficial hearing or forum on the Downing Street memo in a basement room in the Capitol where notable opponents of the Iraq War Joseph C. Wilson, Ray McGovern and Cindy Sheehan, among others, testified.
A website, www.downingstreetmemo.com,[15] was created on 13 May, "to fill a void left by the American mainstream media," and continues with its primary aim "to provide a resource for anyone who wants to understand the meaning and context of these documents as they relate to the Bush administration's case for war."
On 18 May, conservative pundit and former Reagan administration advisor Paul Craig Roberts wrote an article calling for Bush's impeachment for lying to Congress about the case for war.
[20] Also on that day, he and Kevin Zeese authored an op-ed for The Boston Globe to support the call for impeachment against Bush, citing the memo as part of the evidence that the possibility of deliberate deception by the administration should be investigated.
[25] The request states the constitutional grounds for impeachment: [The US President] has not given [the Senate] full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them.Democrats.com raised one thousand dollars, offered as a reward to anyone who could get George Bush to answer the following question "Yes" or "No: In July 2002, did you and your administration "fix" the intelligence and facts about non-existent Iraqi WMD's and ties to terrorism – which were disputed by US intelligence officials – to sell your decision to invade Iraq to Congress, the American People, and the world – as quoted in the Downing Street Minutes?In addition a number of lesser prizes were offered for lesser responses, down to a $100 for posing the question clearly to Bush.
[35] The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo implicated the Prime Minister's role in the Iraq War on 9 May 2007 – and the Downing Street memo specifically – as "the principal reason for the UK's disillusionment with Tony Blair.
"[36] The Chilean newspaper La Segunda on 11 May 2007 called the Downing Street memo "one of the best-kept secrets in Tony Blair's ten years as prime minister."
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair denied that anything in the memo demonstrated misconduct and said that it added little to what was already known about how British policy on Iraq developed, also commenting that "that memorandum was written before we went to the United Nations".
[37] On 7 June 2005, at a joint George W. Bush-Tony Blair press briefing in the White House, Reuters correspondent Steve Holland asked, "On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action.
President Bush did not address the issue of the intelligence and facts being "fixed" around a decision to go to war, but he did deny that he had, at the time of the memo, already decided to use military force against Saddam Hussein, saying "There's nothing farther from the truth."
"[40] When the document was published, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair denied that anything in the memo demonstrated misconduct and said that it added little to what was already known about how British policy on Iraq developed.
[41] On 16 May, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said that the memo's statement that intelligence was "being fixed" to support a decision to invade Iraq was "flat out wrong".
[49] Previous to the appearance of the Downing Street Memo, six other British (Blair) Cabinet papers originating around March 2002 were obtained by Michael Smith and used in two Daily Telegraph stories[50][51] published on 18 September 2004.
[54] On 5 October 2004, facsimiles of these documents appeared online,[55] provided by Professor Michael Lewis of Cambridge University, who had also housed the file at Iraq expert Glen Rangwala's Middle East Reference website.
Interest in these documents was revived around 8 June 2005, following their appearance in a discussion thread at Democratic Underground[57][58] and subsequently they began to be quoted in US media, after Rawstory and NBC verified their authenticity with Smith and British government sources.
[61] Another document was the Rycroft email, showing the author of the Downing Street Memo actually believed that Saddam should be removed because of a threat by Iraq getting WMDs into the hands of terrorists.
Robin Niblett, a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, has said it would be easy for Americans to misunderstand the reference to intelligence being "fixed around" Iraq policy. "
[70] Some detractors from the memo have appeared to make the argument or give the impression that the "fraudulently altered" sense of "fix" is uniquely American and does not exist in British English,[citation needed] but this is false.