The Bloody Trail from Downing Street to Washington
British documents and American generals provide further evidence of a premeditated crime of aggression against Iraq
Published by Online Journal, July 8th 2005: http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/070805Davies/070805davies.html
& by Z Magazine, September 2005
In “The Crime of War: from Nuremberg to Fallujah” (Z Magazine, February 2005), I described how the war in Iraq constitutes aggression as it is defined under international law. At the time I was writing that report, discussions of legality within and between the U.S. and British Governments were closely guarded secrets, and I had to take their public statements as indications of their legal position.
Now, nine leaked British documents have laid bare the British side of those discussions and revealed that British Law Officers explicitly and consistently advised their government and their American counterparts of the illegality of the U.S. war-plan. In response to their advice, the two governments hatched a “clever plan” to create a legal pretext for war, but the plan failed when the U.N. Security Council rejected it, leaving them with a stark choice between war and legitimacy.
The United States Government belatedly attempted to claim legitimacy for the war based on a unilateral interpretation of the principle of “revival”: that the “formal ceasefire” declared in resolution 687 (1991) was conditional on Iraq’s ongoing compliance with the other terms of that resolution; that Iraq’s alleged “material breach” of certain articles of that resolution could result in a “revival” of the authorization of military force contained in resolution 678 (1990); and that certain clauses of resolution 1441 (2002) were intended to act as an automatic trigger for such a “revival” without further action by the Council.1
The British legal advisors considered this American argument and rejected it, but both governments had long ago chosen war over legitimacy. The British documents show that they were already committed to “regime change” in Iraq by April 2002. And Britain’s Ministry of Defence and two senior U.S. generals have confirmed that offensive military operations began in May 2002, without authorization from the U.S. Congress, the British Parliament or the Security Council.2
The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998
“Revival” was first introduced to justify the establishment of the southern “no-fly zone” in August 1992, and it was sufficiently controversial that a ruling was requested of the U.N. Legal Counsel, Carl-August Fleischauer. He ruled that it was legitimate in that situation, involving limited, proportionate and arguably humanitarian action soon after the end of major hostilities. The U.S. and U.K. also cited “revival” as justification for military action in December 1998, but this was not approved by the Council, and Russia withdrew its ambassadors from Washington and London to protest U.S. and British military action.3
The attack on Iraq in 1998 was preceded by important developments in U.S. policy. In February 1998, 40 self-styled “prominent Americans” signed an open letter to President Clinton, calling on the U.S. Government to recognize Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress as the official government of Iraq. The signers included Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Richard Armitage, Frank Carlucci, James Woolsey and Zalmay Khalilzad.4 The same group then lobbied Congress to produce the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which declared support for “efforts to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq” to be the official policy of the United States Government. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the House and unanimously in the Senate, and was signed into law by President Clinton.5
The leaked British documents show that, when Prime Minister Blair threw his support to the U.S. policy of “regime change” in March 2002, his legal advisors consistently and repeatedly told him that “regime change” could not be a legitimate policy goal under international law. Why did legal advisors in Washington not raise the same “red flags” in 1998 as their British counterparts did in 2002?
The U.S. Government has violated domestic and international law in pursuit of similar policies in the past, but Congress moved to investigate and curb such violations in 1975-6 and again in 1982-6. The U.N. General Assembly condemned the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 as “a flagrant violation of international law”, but congressional hearings that were scheduled to investigate those charges were indefinitely postponed.6
It is important for Americans to understand that we pay substantial political, diplomatic and economic consequences when our government violates international law. These are admittedly difficult to isolate from the other adverse consequences of a foreign policy built on structural inequality and exploitation, and the economic effects are hard to quantify. However outright violations of international law undermine more general U.S. claims of legitimacy in its lopsided relations with other countries. The people of the world have essentially embraced the democratic principles that are embodied in the U.N. system, and rightly judge the U.S. harshly when it violates these rules (which it largely wrote in the first place).
By formally adopting a policy of supporting “regime change” in Iraq, the U.S. Congress assumed a responsibility to assure that this policy was pursued within the bounds of domestic and international law, and it now has a serious responsibility to investigate substantial evidence that it was not.
At the same time that Congress was adopting this policy, the British and American governments were taking covert action to keep Iraq’s alleged weapons programs in the public mind. Former chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter told the British parliamentary enquiry into the death of Dr. David Kelly that he was recruited by MI6 in 1997 to take part in “Operation Mass Appeal”. This operation planted stories about Iraq’s alleged weapons programs in newspapers in Poland, India and South Africa so that they would filter back to media consumers in Europe and North America.7 This falls within long-established practice of Western intelligence agencies, which frequently employ journalists as agents to shape popular opinion, but it helps to explain why so many Americans continued to believe that Iraq still possessed these weapons even as our government failed to produce any evidence of their existence.8
The “prominent Americans” took their next step toward regime change in Iraq on September 11th 2001. At about 2:40 p.m. that afternoon, Donald Rumsfeld ordered his subordinates to draw up a plan to attack Iraq. Notes taken by one of his aides quote him as saying he wanted “best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Usama Bin-Laden. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not”.9
March 2002 - the first six documents
The first batch of six leaked British documents date from March 2002 and they were leaked to the Daily Telegraph in September 2004. They include an “Options Paper” written for Blair by his Defense and Overseas Secretariat; a “Legal Background Paper”; a memo from foreign policy advisor Sir David Manning to Blair on meetings with Condoleeza Rice; a memo from British Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer to Manning regarding a meeting with Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz; a letter to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw from his Political Director Peter Ricketts; and a memo from Straw to Blair.10
The Options Paper and Legal Background Paper were dated March 8th 2002 and were evidently drawn up in response to an initiative on Iraq from Washington. The Options Paper spells out two choices: toughening the containment policy, or regime change. It called the latter “a new departure which would require the construction of a coalition and a legal justification” and went on to say “A full opinion should be sought from the Law Officers if the above options are developed further…Of itself, Regime Change has no basis in international law.” On the American position, it said, “The U.S. has lost faith in containment”, and also, “Washington believes the legal basis for an attack on Iraq already exists”.
The Legal Background Paper explained that the U.S. Government had argued for interpretations of Security Council resolutions on Iraq that were neither supported by the language of those resolutions nor shared by other Council members. The no-fly zones were set up to protect the civilian population, and the paper rejects a U.S. claim that they could be used for a different purpose, to “enforce” Iraqi compliance with resolutions 687 and 688. Also, the U.S. had argued that an individual member state could make an independent determination that Iraq was in breach of one of Security Council resolutions without the agreement of the Council. The paper rejects this claim too, adding “We are not aware of any other State which supports this view.” While addressing and rejecting these unilateral U.S. positions, the paper does not address any legal justification the Americans may have advanced for “regime change”, which of course had no basis in any of these resolutions.
The Options Paper said that the Americans were pushing for an invasion in the fall of 2002, and six months would be needed to make the necessary military preparations, leaving the Prime Minister very little time to make a decision. He was due to meet with President Bush at Crawford in early April. In conclusion, the paper suggested “a staged approach, establishing international support, building up pressure on Saddam, and developing military plans”.
The memo from Manning to Blair on March 14th 2002, marked “Secret – Strictly Personal”, indicates that Blair had by then made up his mind to fall in line with the U.S. policy of “regime change”, and insisted only that it be “very carefully done”:
“I had dinner with Condi on Tuesday; and lunch with her and an NSC team on Wednesday (to which Christopher Meyer also came). These were good exchanges, and particularly frank when we were one-on-one at dinner. We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq. It is clear that Bush is grateful for your support and has registered that you are getting flak.
I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option. Condi’s enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed. But there were some signs, since we last spoke, of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks.
From what she said, Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions: how to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified; what value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition; how to coordinate a US/allied military campaign with internal opposition (assuming there is any); what happens on the morning after?
…I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties. They may agree that failure is not an option, but this does not mean they will avoid it.”
Chilling words, showing that Blair had agreed to “regime change” before even beginning the effort to construct a legal basis for it or to address its many practical flaws.
On March 17th 2002, Ambassador Meyer met with Wolfowitz and reiterated the same points. He told Wolfowitz, “We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option… I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN SCRs and the critical importance of MEPP [Middle East Peace Process] as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy.” He reported all this to Manning in a memo marked “Confidential and Personal” on March 18th.
The notes from Ricketts to Straw and then from Straw to Blair on March 25th 2002 detail some of the problems the Foreign Office had identified in the American plan. Straw told Blair that the British strategy had to be based on international law and therefore on Iraq’s “flagrant breach” of its obligations under the U.N.-mandated inspections regime. He wrote, “I believe that a demand for the unfettered readmission of weapons inspectors is essential, in terms of public explanation, and in terms of legal sanction for any military action.” He warned of two “potential elephant traps”, namely the illegality of regime change, and the question of an additional mandate from the Security Council. “The U.S. are likely to oppose any idea of a fresh mandate. On the other side, the weight of legal advice here is that a fresh mandate may well be required.”
Two weeks later, Bush hosted Blair at his ranch in Texas. At the joint news conference after the meeting, he announced, “I explained to the Prime Minister that the policy of my government is the removal of Saddam, and that all options are on the table . . . The world would be better off without him and so will the future.”11 Bush was committed to this policy, and Blair was now committed to supporting it through a “clever plan” to generate support and provide legal justification. A reported incident at the White House in March 2002 made Bush’s position even clearer. Some Republican senators were meeting with Rice when Bush stopped by for a chat. Somebody mentioned Saddam Hussein, to which Bush responded “Fuck Saddam! We’re taking him out.”12
The British documents make it clear that Blair’s more nuanced public statements during this period were dishonest. After diplomatically endorsing “regime change”, he told the press conference at Crawford, “How we now proceed in this situation, how we make sure that this threat that is posed by weapons of mass destruction is dealt with, that is a matter that is open. And when the time comes for taking those decisions we will tell people about those decisions”.
Between April and July 2002, the plan proceeded. The war in Afghanistan had led the American public to believe that war was not such a terrible prospect and that the latest generation of U.S. military technology could win any battle quickly and easily. After September 11th 2001, the Congress and U.S. media companies felt bound to support the “War on Terror” even as it shifted its focus and its purpose. The public expressed little anxiety regarding the prospect of war in Iraq but was still easily panicked by color-coded terrorism alerts.
The Downing Street memo and briefing paper
The “Downing Street memo” is actually the minutes of a “Prime Minister’s Meeting” on Iraq, attended by Blair and his advisors on July 23rd 2002.13 The “Cabinet Office paper” is an incomplete transcript of the paper that was distributed to the participants in preparation for this meeting.14
The opening summary of the Cabinet Office paper invites ministers to “agree that the objective of any military action should be a stable and law-abiding Iraq”, but the four paragraphs on “Justification” (11-14) describe the equally elusive quest for a law-abiding U.K. and U.S. The fundamental illegitimacy of U.S. policy is still the central problem: “U.S. views of international law vary from that of the U.K. and the international community. Regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law.” And yet, “U.S. military planning unambiguously takes as its objective the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime”.
The paper presciently describes the train-wreck that in fact occurred when the timetable for the invasion collided with the time required for thorough inspections in March 2003. Iraqi obstruction was essential to the pretext for war, but it would probably not happen in the early stages of the inspection process. This section of the paper concludes, “…We would be most unlikely to achieve a legal base for military action by January 2003”.
John Scarlett, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, stated at the outset of the meeting that only “massive military action” would be likely to accomplish “regime change”. Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, then told the meeting that there had been “a perceptible shift in attitude” in Washington and that “military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defense Staff, described two military options: “Running Start” involved a gradual escalation of the bombing campaign to provoke the Iraqis into defending themselves, escalating eventually to all-out war. He called this a “hazardous option”, and seemed to prefer the other choice, “Generated Start”, involving 250,000 U.S. troops, with a 72-hour bombing campaign to be followed by a move on Baghdad.
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon spoke of “spikes of activity” that had already begun “to put pressure on the regime”. Most Americans can remember incidents from this period that were reported as Iraqi threats to allied aircraft patrolling the “no-fly zones”, with U.S. and British planes responding by “targeting radar sites”. Critics of U.S. policy suggested at the time that this was a cover for a low-grade bombing campaign to degrade Iraqi defenses in preparation for an invasion.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense has now published its figures for allied missions flown and tonnages of bombs dropped on Iraq between 2000 and 2002. The total tonnage of bombs dropped on Iraq in 2000 was 155 tons. This fell to 107 tons in 2001. By contrast, in six and a half months between May and the second week in November 2002, allied planes dropped 820 tons of bombs on Iraq,15 including a massive air raid in September 2002 by a combined fleet of 100 planes, apparently linked to a decision taken on August 5th to proceed with a “hybrid” of the Running and Generated Start plans.16
On July 17th 2003, USAF General Michael Moseley, who commanded this bombing campaign, told an allied briefing at Nellis AFB in Nevada that it “laid the foundations” for the invasion, and General Tommy Franks has confirmed the nature and purpose of this campaign in his autobiography, “American Soldier”. The United States and Britain had already launched an undeclared air war.17
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had scheduled a meeting with Secretary of State Powell for later that week, and promised to discuss with him the timeline outlined by the defense officials. He understood that Bush was committed to war, but thought the timing was not yet decided. “But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the U.N. weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.”
Then it was Lord Goldsmith’s turn. He said “that the desire for regime change was not a legal basis for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorization. The first and second could not be the base in this case.”
Then, “the Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD…If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.” Ever the politician, Blair, like Bush, had a sense of what would work politically, but his only legal strategy was to hope that Iraq would cooperate by barring the inspectors.
More reservations were expressed regarding the workability of the U.S. battle plan, and Straw urged “discreetly exploring” an ultimatum on the inspectors. He was confident that Hussein would play into their hands by “playing hardball with the U.N.”
Hoon “cautioned that many in the U.S. did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.”
The minutes ended by concluding that “We should work on the assumption that the U.K. would take part in any military action”, but that the extent of British participation was still in question. The Foreign Secretary would “discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam”, and “the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers”.
Americans demanding congressional action have seized on Dearlove’s statement that “the facts and intelligence were being fixed around the policy” as a “smoking gun”, proof of the lies told by Bush and his subordinates. While many of the political aspects of the plan were actually “clever”, not one piece of “fixed” intelligence ever stood up to serious scrutiny, and responsibility for the result must also be shared by those who knew this but remained silent.
The plan moved forward through the fall of 2002: Bush presented his ultimatum to the U.N.; he issued his controversial “doctrine of preemption” as part of the National Security Strategy of the U.S.A. (2002); and the U.S. Congress debated the resolution to authorize war. Senator Bob Graham, the Chairman of the Select Intelligence Committee, told anyone who would listen that real intelligence on Iraqi WMDs had yet to be presented, but fear, mystification and political calculation were enough to win the day. Graham’s colleague from Florida, Bill Nelson, reported on his web site that his constituent correspondence ran nine to one against the resolution, but he voted for it anyway.
Bush made his infamous State of the Union Speech, in which he identified 81 mm. rocket casings as centrifuge parts and imaginary stockpiles of 12-year-old degraded chemical and biological agents as potent threats (of the items cited, only mustard gas has a shelf-life of more than five years), amongst a litany of bogus claims.18 Powell gave his equally disgraceful presentation to the Security Council, after reportedly throwing Lewis Libby’s first draft of it up in the air and saying “I’m not reading this. This is bullshit”.19 Proponents of peace debunked the lies, but no prominent opposition figure emerged to lead them. Mainstream U.S. media efficiently marginalized serious questions and anti-war views.
“Full advice from Attorney General on legality of Iraq war”
The last of the leaked British documents is the full legal advice given to Blair by Lord Goldsmith on March 7th 2003, twelve days before the war officially began.20 In this document, Goldsmith dismissed most of the rationales for war that have been widely accepted by Americans, leaving only the “revival” of the Security Council’s authorization of force in 1990 as a possible but highly tenuous justification for the invasion. He made it clear that U.S. officials had now adopted this as their legal position, and he was clearly worried that unilateral interpretations of Security Council resolutions were being used as a lever to open the door to actions that were neither authorized by any of those resolutions nor otherwise permissible under international law.
He identified the following flaws in the American position:
(1) He rejects Bush’s doctrine of preemption relating to “danger in the future” as opposed to the “right to respond proportionately to an imminent attack.” He writes, “This is not a doctrine which, in my opinion, exists or is recognized in international law”.
(2) While accepting the basic principle of “revival”, he writes, “the U.K. has consistently taken the view (as did the Fleischauer opinion) that . . . it is for the Council to assess whether any such breach of those obligations has occurred”, and “only the Council can decide if a violation is sufficiently serious to revive the authorization to use force.”
(3) He rejected the possibility that, because the U.S. interpreted resolution 1441 differently from Britain and other Council members, the resolution might not legally constrain the U.S. to the same extent as the U.K.
(4) The American interpretation “reduces the role of the Council discussion under OP12 (of resolution 1441) to a procedural formality… I remain of the opinion that this would be the effect in legal terms of the view that no further resolution is required. The Council would be required to meet, and all members would be under an obligation to participate in good faith, but even if an overwhelming majority of the Council were opposed to the use of force, military action could proceed regardless”.
(5) He insisted that any military action be limited to what was necessary to enforce the terms of the cease-fire. As he had said all along, “Regime change cannot be the objective of military action”.
In reviewing this document, I find a number of additional flaws in his arguments in favor of “revival” and in his interpretation of resolution 1441 (2002):
(1) The concept of “revival” has no basis in the language of resolutions 678 (1990) or 687 (1991). The “formal ceasefire” was neither temporary nor conditional on Iraq’s future behavior nor was there any provision for a “revival” of the authorization of military force.
(2) “Revival” is superfluous or even detrimental to any legitimate purpose, since the Security Council already has all the power it needs to authorize military action whenever that is really what it means to do.
(3) Goldsmith writes that he relies on “the previous practice of the Council” for his interpretation that “serious consequences” in resolution 1441 (2002) is equivalent to “all necessary means” in resolution 678 (1990). This is not borne out by the record. The past practice of the Council has been to use “all necessary means” to authorize military force, and “serious consequences” to retain greater flexibility, and this was how other members interpreted these terms in this case.
While Goldsmith gave great deference to the “strength and sincerity” with which the Americans presented their arguments, he did not ultimately find their position defensible under international law, and he warned Blair of several legal avenues by which he and the British Government could face prosecution for international aggression or murder. When the invasion proceeded in the face of the British legal officers’ consistent objections, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Deputy Legal Advisor to the Foreign Office, resigned along with two of her colleagues. Her letter of resignation has since been made public. It referred to the invasion as a “crime of aggression”, and ended, “I joined the office in 1974. It has been a privilege to work here. I leave with very great sadness”.22
Conclusion
The upshot of all this has been precisely what the U.N. Charter was designed to prevent: the invasion and occupation of a smaller country by two larger and more powerful ones. We are now engaged in an intractable war whose principal victims are the civilian population of Iraq. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health have estimated that at least 100,000 people have died, and have concluded that U.S. and British air strikes have been the leading cause of violent death among civilians in Iraq since March 2003.23 This latter conclusion is supported by Iraqi Health Ministry reports and dramatically contradicts the impression conveyed by the “embedded” media that anti-American forces have been responsible for most of the violence in Iraq.24
These documents reveal that the governments of these two powerful countries were unable to honestly reconcile their own economic and strategic interests with their responsibilities under international law and their obligation to act in good faith in the interest of international peace and security as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. As a result of this self-serving confusion of motives, they adopted positions and negotiating strategies that were deliberately designed to circumvent the letter and the spirit of the U.N. Charter. In order to restore a minimum of legitimacy to U.S. foreign policy:
(1) The U.S. Congress should investigate all serious charges against the United States Government and its officials, from perjury to international aggression, examining the evidence in these British documents and obtaining access to relevant U.S. documents.
(2) The United States Government should diplomatically and publicly assure the governments and people of the world that it will now and in the future abide by treaty commitments and customary principles of international law in accordance with Article VI of the United States Constitution.
(3) U.S. policies that presume the non-existent right claimed by the “doctrine of preemption” should be rescinded, and the National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (2005), which is largely based on this doctrine, should be substantially revised.
(4) After two years of inconclusive warfare, the United States Government should understand that its self-appointed mission to “restore international peace and security” has not just failed, but has in fact accomplished the reverse. “Coalition” forces should halt military operations and withdraw from Iraq. The U.N. should assume its legitimate function, to assist the Iraqi people as they pick up and put back together the pieces of their broken country and determine their own political future.
1. The Times, April 28th 2005, “Full advice from Attorney General on legality of Iraq war”, paragraphs 6-13.
2. Michael Smith, Sunday Times, June 19th 2005, “British bombing raids were illegal, says Foreign Office”.
3. BBC News, December 18th 1998, “Russia warns of diplomatic breakdown”.
4. Larry Chin, Online Journal, November 7th 2002 “The deep politics of regime removal in Iraq: Overt conquest, covert operations”.
5. 105th Congress (1998), H.R.4655.
6. Human Rights Watch, April 7th 1991, “Human Rights in Post-Invasion Panama: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied”.
7. Nicholas Rufford, Sunday Times, December 28th 2003, “Revealed: how MI6 sold the Iraq war”.
8. William Blum, Killing Hope (Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine 1995).
9. Larry Chin, Online Journal, November 7th 2002, “The deep politics…”
10. Michael Smith, Daily Telegraph, September 18th 2004, “Failure is not an option, but it doesn’t mean they will avoid it”.
11. CNN, April 6th 2002, “Transcript of Bush-Blair news conference”.
12. Daniel Eisenberg, Time, May 5th 2002, “We’re Taking Him Out”.
13. Sunday Times, May 1st 2005, “The secret Downing Street memo”.
14. Sunday Times, June 12th 2005, “Cabinet Office paper: Conditions for military action”.
15. Almost half the 1700 tons dropped on Tokyo on March 9th-10th 1945, killing 100,000 people.
16. Michael Smith, Sunday Times, May 29th 2005, “RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war”
17. Michael Smith, Sunday Times, June 26th 2005, “General admits to secret air war”.
18. CNN, July 17th 2002, “Scott Ritter: Facts Needed Before Iraq Attack”.
19. Bruce B. Auster, Mark Mazzetti & Edward T. Pound, US News & World Report, June 9th 2003, “Truth and Consequences”
20. The Times, April 28th 2005, “Full advice…”
21. BBC News, March 24th 2005, “Wilmshurst resignation letter”.
22. Les Roberts et al., The Lancet, Vol 364, November 20th 2004, “Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey”.
23. Nancy A. Youssef, Detroit Free Press, September 25th 2004, “More Iraqis killed by U.S. than by terror”.
Published by Online Journal, July 8th 2005: http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/070805Davies/070805davies.html
& by Z Magazine, September 2005
In “The Crime of War: from Nuremberg to Fallujah” (Z Magazine, February 2005), I described how the war in Iraq constitutes aggression as it is defined under international law. At the time I was writing that report, discussions of legality within and between the U.S. and British Governments were closely guarded secrets, and I had to take their public statements as indications of their legal position.
Now, nine leaked British documents have laid bare the British side of those discussions and revealed that British Law Officers explicitly and consistently advised their government and their American counterparts of the illegality of the U.S. war-plan. In response to their advice, the two governments hatched a “clever plan” to create a legal pretext for war, but the plan failed when the U.N. Security Council rejected it, leaving them with a stark choice between war and legitimacy.
The United States Government belatedly attempted to claim legitimacy for the war based on a unilateral interpretation of the principle of “revival”: that the “formal ceasefire” declared in resolution 687 (1991) was conditional on Iraq’s ongoing compliance with the other terms of that resolution; that Iraq’s alleged “material breach” of certain articles of that resolution could result in a “revival” of the authorization of military force contained in resolution 678 (1990); and that certain clauses of resolution 1441 (2002) were intended to act as an automatic trigger for such a “revival” without further action by the Council.1
The British legal advisors considered this American argument and rejected it, but both governments had long ago chosen war over legitimacy. The British documents show that they were already committed to “regime change” in Iraq by April 2002. And Britain’s Ministry of Defence and two senior U.S. generals have confirmed that offensive military operations began in May 2002, without authorization from the U.S. Congress, the British Parliament or the Security Council.2
The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998
“Revival” was first introduced to justify the establishment of the southern “no-fly zone” in August 1992, and it was sufficiently controversial that a ruling was requested of the U.N. Legal Counsel, Carl-August Fleischauer. He ruled that it was legitimate in that situation, involving limited, proportionate and arguably humanitarian action soon after the end of major hostilities. The U.S. and U.K. also cited “revival” as justification for military action in December 1998, but this was not approved by the Council, and Russia withdrew its ambassadors from Washington and London to protest U.S. and British military action.3
The attack on Iraq in 1998 was preceded by important developments in U.S. policy. In February 1998, 40 self-styled “prominent Americans” signed an open letter to President Clinton, calling on the U.S. Government to recognize Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress as the official government of Iraq. The signers included Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Richard Armitage, Frank Carlucci, James Woolsey and Zalmay Khalilzad.4 The same group then lobbied Congress to produce the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which declared support for “efforts to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq” to be the official policy of the United States Government. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the House and unanimously in the Senate, and was signed into law by President Clinton.5
The leaked British documents show that, when Prime Minister Blair threw his support to the U.S. policy of “regime change” in March 2002, his legal advisors consistently and repeatedly told him that “regime change” could not be a legitimate policy goal under international law. Why did legal advisors in Washington not raise the same “red flags” in 1998 as their British counterparts did in 2002?
The U.S. Government has violated domestic and international law in pursuit of similar policies in the past, but Congress moved to investigate and curb such violations in 1975-6 and again in 1982-6. The U.N. General Assembly condemned the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 as “a flagrant violation of international law”, but congressional hearings that were scheduled to investigate those charges were indefinitely postponed.6
It is important for Americans to understand that we pay substantial political, diplomatic and economic consequences when our government violates international law. These are admittedly difficult to isolate from the other adverse consequences of a foreign policy built on structural inequality and exploitation, and the economic effects are hard to quantify. However outright violations of international law undermine more general U.S. claims of legitimacy in its lopsided relations with other countries. The people of the world have essentially embraced the democratic principles that are embodied in the U.N. system, and rightly judge the U.S. harshly when it violates these rules (which it largely wrote in the first place).
By formally adopting a policy of supporting “regime change” in Iraq, the U.S. Congress assumed a responsibility to assure that this policy was pursued within the bounds of domestic and international law, and it now has a serious responsibility to investigate substantial evidence that it was not.
At the same time that Congress was adopting this policy, the British and American governments were taking covert action to keep Iraq’s alleged weapons programs in the public mind. Former chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter told the British parliamentary enquiry into the death of Dr. David Kelly that he was recruited by MI6 in 1997 to take part in “Operation Mass Appeal”. This operation planted stories about Iraq’s alleged weapons programs in newspapers in Poland, India and South Africa so that they would filter back to media consumers in Europe and North America.7 This falls within long-established practice of Western intelligence agencies, which frequently employ journalists as agents to shape popular opinion, but it helps to explain why so many Americans continued to believe that Iraq still possessed these weapons even as our government failed to produce any evidence of their existence.8
The “prominent Americans” took their next step toward regime change in Iraq on September 11th 2001. At about 2:40 p.m. that afternoon, Donald Rumsfeld ordered his subordinates to draw up a plan to attack Iraq. Notes taken by one of his aides quote him as saying he wanted “best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Usama Bin-Laden. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not”.9
March 2002 - the first six documents
The first batch of six leaked British documents date from March 2002 and they were leaked to the Daily Telegraph in September 2004. They include an “Options Paper” written for Blair by his Defense and Overseas Secretariat; a “Legal Background Paper”; a memo from foreign policy advisor Sir David Manning to Blair on meetings with Condoleeza Rice; a memo from British Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer to Manning regarding a meeting with Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz; a letter to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw from his Political Director Peter Ricketts; and a memo from Straw to Blair.10
The Options Paper and Legal Background Paper were dated March 8th 2002 and were evidently drawn up in response to an initiative on Iraq from Washington. The Options Paper spells out two choices: toughening the containment policy, or regime change. It called the latter “a new departure which would require the construction of a coalition and a legal justification” and went on to say “A full opinion should be sought from the Law Officers if the above options are developed further…Of itself, Regime Change has no basis in international law.” On the American position, it said, “The U.S. has lost faith in containment”, and also, “Washington believes the legal basis for an attack on Iraq already exists”.
The Legal Background Paper explained that the U.S. Government had argued for interpretations of Security Council resolutions on Iraq that were neither supported by the language of those resolutions nor shared by other Council members. The no-fly zones were set up to protect the civilian population, and the paper rejects a U.S. claim that they could be used for a different purpose, to “enforce” Iraqi compliance with resolutions 687 and 688. Also, the U.S. had argued that an individual member state could make an independent determination that Iraq was in breach of one of Security Council resolutions without the agreement of the Council. The paper rejects this claim too, adding “We are not aware of any other State which supports this view.” While addressing and rejecting these unilateral U.S. positions, the paper does not address any legal justification the Americans may have advanced for “regime change”, which of course had no basis in any of these resolutions.
The Options Paper said that the Americans were pushing for an invasion in the fall of 2002, and six months would be needed to make the necessary military preparations, leaving the Prime Minister very little time to make a decision. He was due to meet with President Bush at Crawford in early April. In conclusion, the paper suggested “a staged approach, establishing international support, building up pressure on Saddam, and developing military plans”.
The memo from Manning to Blair on March 14th 2002, marked “Secret – Strictly Personal”, indicates that Blair had by then made up his mind to fall in line with the U.S. policy of “regime change”, and insisted only that it be “very carefully done”:
“I had dinner with Condi on Tuesday; and lunch with her and an NSC team on Wednesday (to which Christopher Meyer also came). These were good exchanges, and particularly frank when we were one-on-one at dinner. We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq. It is clear that Bush is grateful for your support and has registered that you are getting flak.
I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option. Condi’s enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed. But there were some signs, since we last spoke, of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks.
From what she said, Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions: how to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified; what value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition; how to coordinate a US/allied military campaign with internal opposition (assuming there is any); what happens on the morning after?
…I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties. They may agree that failure is not an option, but this does not mean they will avoid it.”
Chilling words, showing that Blair had agreed to “regime change” before even beginning the effort to construct a legal basis for it or to address its many practical flaws.
On March 17th 2002, Ambassador Meyer met with Wolfowitz and reiterated the same points. He told Wolfowitz, “We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option… I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN SCRs and the critical importance of MEPP [Middle East Peace Process] as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy.” He reported all this to Manning in a memo marked “Confidential and Personal” on March 18th.
The notes from Ricketts to Straw and then from Straw to Blair on March 25th 2002 detail some of the problems the Foreign Office had identified in the American plan. Straw told Blair that the British strategy had to be based on international law and therefore on Iraq’s “flagrant breach” of its obligations under the U.N.-mandated inspections regime. He wrote, “I believe that a demand for the unfettered readmission of weapons inspectors is essential, in terms of public explanation, and in terms of legal sanction for any military action.” He warned of two “potential elephant traps”, namely the illegality of regime change, and the question of an additional mandate from the Security Council. “The U.S. are likely to oppose any idea of a fresh mandate. On the other side, the weight of legal advice here is that a fresh mandate may well be required.”
Two weeks later, Bush hosted Blair at his ranch in Texas. At the joint news conference after the meeting, he announced, “I explained to the Prime Minister that the policy of my government is the removal of Saddam, and that all options are on the table . . . The world would be better off without him and so will the future.”11 Bush was committed to this policy, and Blair was now committed to supporting it through a “clever plan” to generate support and provide legal justification. A reported incident at the White House in March 2002 made Bush’s position even clearer. Some Republican senators were meeting with Rice when Bush stopped by for a chat. Somebody mentioned Saddam Hussein, to which Bush responded “Fuck Saddam! We’re taking him out.”12
The British documents make it clear that Blair’s more nuanced public statements during this period were dishonest. After diplomatically endorsing “regime change”, he told the press conference at Crawford, “How we now proceed in this situation, how we make sure that this threat that is posed by weapons of mass destruction is dealt with, that is a matter that is open. And when the time comes for taking those decisions we will tell people about those decisions”.
Between April and July 2002, the plan proceeded. The war in Afghanistan had led the American public to believe that war was not such a terrible prospect and that the latest generation of U.S. military technology could win any battle quickly and easily. After September 11th 2001, the Congress and U.S. media companies felt bound to support the “War on Terror” even as it shifted its focus and its purpose. The public expressed little anxiety regarding the prospect of war in Iraq but was still easily panicked by color-coded terrorism alerts.
The Downing Street memo and briefing paper
The “Downing Street memo” is actually the minutes of a “Prime Minister’s Meeting” on Iraq, attended by Blair and his advisors on July 23rd 2002.13 The “Cabinet Office paper” is an incomplete transcript of the paper that was distributed to the participants in preparation for this meeting.14
The opening summary of the Cabinet Office paper invites ministers to “agree that the objective of any military action should be a stable and law-abiding Iraq”, but the four paragraphs on “Justification” (11-14) describe the equally elusive quest for a law-abiding U.K. and U.S. The fundamental illegitimacy of U.S. policy is still the central problem: “U.S. views of international law vary from that of the U.K. and the international community. Regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law.” And yet, “U.S. military planning unambiguously takes as its objective the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime”.
The paper presciently describes the train-wreck that in fact occurred when the timetable for the invasion collided with the time required for thorough inspections in March 2003. Iraqi obstruction was essential to the pretext for war, but it would probably not happen in the early stages of the inspection process. This section of the paper concludes, “…We would be most unlikely to achieve a legal base for military action by January 2003”.
John Scarlett, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, stated at the outset of the meeting that only “massive military action” would be likely to accomplish “regime change”. Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, then told the meeting that there had been “a perceptible shift in attitude” in Washington and that “military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defense Staff, described two military options: “Running Start” involved a gradual escalation of the bombing campaign to provoke the Iraqis into defending themselves, escalating eventually to all-out war. He called this a “hazardous option”, and seemed to prefer the other choice, “Generated Start”, involving 250,000 U.S. troops, with a 72-hour bombing campaign to be followed by a move on Baghdad.
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon spoke of “spikes of activity” that had already begun “to put pressure on the regime”. Most Americans can remember incidents from this period that were reported as Iraqi threats to allied aircraft patrolling the “no-fly zones”, with U.S. and British planes responding by “targeting radar sites”. Critics of U.S. policy suggested at the time that this was a cover for a low-grade bombing campaign to degrade Iraqi defenses in preparation for an invasion.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense has now published its figures for allied missions flown and tonnages of bombs dropped on Iraq between 2000 and 2002. The total tonnage of bombs dropped on Iraq in 2000 was 155 tons. This fell to 107 tons in 2001. By contrast, in six and a half months between May and the second week in November 2002, allied planes dropped 820 tons of bombs on Iraq,15 including a massive air raid in September 2002 by a combined fleet of 100 planes, apparently linked to a decision taken on August 5th to proceed with a “hybrid” of the Running and Generated Start plans.16
On July 17th 2003, USAF General Michael Moseley, who commanded this bombing campaign, told an allied briefing at Nellis AFB in Nevada that it “laid the foundations” for the invasion, and General Tommy Franks has confirmed the nature and purpose of this campaign in his autobiography, “American Soldier”. The United States and Britain had already launched an undeclared air war.17
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had scheduled a meeting with Secretary of State Powell for later that week, and promised to discuss with him the timeline outlined by the defense officials. He understood that Bush was committed to war, but thought the timing was not yet decided. “But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the U.N. weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.”
Then it was Lord Goldsmith’s turn. He said “that the desire for regime change was not a legal basis for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorization. The first and second could not be the base in this case.”
Then, “the Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD…If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.” Ever the politician, Blair, like Bush, had a sense of what would work politically, but his only legal strategy was to hope that Iraq would cooperate by barring the inspectors.
More reservations were expressed regarding the workability of the U.S. battle plan, and Straw urged “discreetly exploring” an ultimatum on the inspectors. He was confident that Hussein would play into their hands by “playing hardball with the U.N.”
Hoon “cautioned that many in the U.S. did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.”
The minutes ended by concluding that “We should work on the assumption that the U.K. would take part in any military action”, but that the extent of British participation was still in question. The Foreign Secretary would “discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam”, and “the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers”.
Americans demanding congressional action have seized on Dearlove’s statement that “the facts and intelligence were being fixed around the policy” as a “smoking gun”, proof of the lies told by Bush and his subordinates. While many of the political aspects of the plan were actually “clever”, not one piece of “fixed” intelligence ever stood up to serious scrutiny, and responsibility for the result must also be shared by those who knew this but remained silent.
The plan moved forward through the fall of 2002: Bush presented his ultimatum to the U.N.; he issued his controversial “doctrine of preemption” as part of the National Security Strategy of the U.S.A. (2002); and the U.S. Congress debated the resolution to authorize war. Senator Bob Graham, the Chairman of the Select Intelligence Committee, told anyone who would listen that real intelligence on Iraqi WMDs had yet to be presented, but fear, mystification and political calculation were enough to win the day. Graham’s colleague from Florida, Bill Nelson, reported on his web site that his constituent correspondence ran nine to one against the resolution, but he voted for it anyway.
Bush made his infamous State of the Union Speech, in which he identified 81 mm. rocket casings as centrifuge parts and imaginary stockpiles of 12-year-old degraded chemical and biological agents as potent threats (of the items cited, only mustard gas has a shelf-life of more than five years), amongst a litany of bogus claims.18 Powell gave his equally disgraceful presentation to the Security Council, after reportedly throwing Lewis Libby’s first draft of it up in the air and saying “I’m not reading this. This is bullshit”.19 Proponents of peace debunked the lies, but no prominent opposition figure emerged to lead them. Mainstream U.S. media efficiently marginalized serious questions and anti-war views.
“Full advice from Attorney General on legality of Iraq war”
The last of the leaked British documents is the full legal advice given to Blair by Lord Goldsmith on March 7th 2003, twelve days before the war officially began.20 In this document, Goldsmith dismissed most of the rationales for war that have been widely accepted by Americans, leaving only the “revival” of the Security Council’s authorization of force in 1990 as a possible but highly tenuous justification for the invasion. He made it clear that U.S. officials had now adopted this as their legal position, and he was clearly worried that unilateral interpretations of Security Council resolutions were being used as a lever to open the door to actions that were neither authorized by any of those resolutions nor otherwise permissible under international law.
He identified the following flaws in the American position:
(1) He rejects Bush’s doctrine of preemption relating to “danger in the future” as opposed to the “right to respond proportionately to an imminent attack.” He writes, “This is not a doctrine which, in my opinion, exists or is recognized in international law”.
(2) While accepting the basic principle of “revival”, he writes, “the U.K. has consistently taken the view (as did the Fleischauer opinion) that . . . it is for the Council to assess whether any such breach of those obligations has occurred”, and “only the Council can decide if a violation is sufficiently serious to revive the authorization to use force.”
(3) He rejected the possibility that, because the U.S. interpreted resolution 1441 differently from Britain and other Council members, the resolution might not legally constrain the U.S. to the same extent as the U.K.
(4) The American interpretation “reduces the role of the Council discussion under OP12 (of resolution 1441) to a procedural formality… I remain of the opinion that this would be the effect in legal terms of the view that no further resolution is required. The Council would be required to meet, and all members would be under an obligation to participate in good faith, but even if an overwhelming majority of the Council were opposed to the use of force, military action could proceed regardless”.
(5) He insisted that any military action be limited to what was necessary to enforce the terms of the cease-fire. As he had said all along, “Regime change cannot be the objective of military action”.
In reviewing this document, I find a number of additional flaws in his arguments in favor of “revival” and in his interpretation of resolution 1441 (2002):
(1) The concept of “revival” has no basis in the language of resolutions 678 (1990) or 687 (1991). The “formal ceasefire” was neither temporary nor conditional on Iraq’s future behavior nor was there any provision for a “revival” of the authorization of military force.
(2) “Revival” is superfluous or even detrimental to any legitimate purpose, since the Security Council already has all the power it needs to authorize military action whenever that is really what it means to do.
(3) Goldsmith writes that he relies on “the previous practice of the Council” for his interpretation that “serious consequences” in resolution 1441 (2002) is equivalent to “all necessary means” in resolution 678 (1990). This is not borne out by the record. The past practice of the Council has been to use “all necessary means” to authorize military force, and “serious consequences” to retain greater flexibility, and this was how other members interpreted these terms in this case.
While Goldsmith gave great deference to the “strength and sincerity” with which the Americans presented their arguments, he did not ultimately find their position defensible under international law, and he warned Blair of several legal avenues by which he and the British Government could face prosecution for international aggression or murder. When the invasion proceeded in the face of the British legal officers’ consistent objections, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Deputy Legal Advisor to the Foreign Office, resigned along with two of her colleagues. Her letter of resignation has since been made public. It referred to the invasion as a “crime of aggression”, and ended, “I joined the office in 1974. It has been a privilege to work here. I leave with very great sadness”.22
Conclusion
The upshot of all this has been precisely what the U.N. Charter was designed to prevent: the invasion and occupation of a smaller country by two larger and more powerful ones. We are now engaged in an intractable war whose principal victims are the civilian population of Iraq. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health have estimated that at least 100,000 people have died, and have concluded that U.S. and British air strikes have been the leading cause of violent death among civilians in Iraq since March 2003.23 This latter conclusion is supported by Iraqi Health Ministry reports and dramatically contradicts the impression conveyed by the “embedded” media that anti-American forces have been responsible for most of the violence in Iraq.24
These documents reveal that the governments of these two powerful countries were unable to honestly reconcile their own economic and strategic interests with their responsibilities under international law and their obligation to act in good faith in the interest of international peace and security as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. As a result of this self-serving confusion of motives, they adopted positions and negotiating strategies that were deliberately designed to circumvent the letter and the spirit of the U.N. Charter. In order to restore a minimum of legitimacy to U.S. foreign policy:
(1) The U.S. Congress should investigate all serious charges against the United States Government and its officials, from perjury to international aggression, examining the evidence in these British documents and obtaining access to relevant U.S. documents.
(2) The United States Government should diplomatically and publicly assure the governments and people of the world that it will now and in the future abide by treaty commitments and customary principles of international law in accordance with Article VI of the United States Constitution.
(3) U.S. policies that presume the non-existent right claimed by the “doctrine of preemption” should be rescinded, and the National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (2005), which is largely based on this doctrine, should be substantially revised.
(4) After two years of inconclusive warfare, the United States Government should understand that its self-appointed mission to “restore international peace and security” has not just failed, but has in fact accomplished the reverse. “Coalition” forces should halt military operations and withdraw from Iraq. The U.N. should assume its legitimate function, to assist the Iraqi people as they pick up and put back together the pieces of their broken country and determine their own political future.
1. The Times, April 28th 2005, “Full advice from Attorney General on legality of Iraq war”, paragraphs 6-13.
2. Michael Smith, Sunday Times, June 19th 2005, “British bombing raids were illegal, says Foreign Office”.
3. BBC News, December 18th 1998, “Russia warns of diplomatic breakdown”.
4. Larry Chin, Online Journal, November 7th 2002 “The deep politics of regime removal in Iraq: Overt conquest, covert operations”.
5. 105th Congress (1998), H.R.4655.
6. Human Rights Watch, April 7th 1991, “Human Rights in Post-Invasion Panama: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied”.
7. Nicholas Rufford, Sunday Times, December 28th 2003, “Revealed: how MI6 sold the Iraq war”.
8. William Blum, Killing Hope (Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine 1995).
9. Larry Chin, Online Journal, November 7th 2002, “The deep politics…”
10. Michael Smith, Daily Telegraph, September 18th 2004, “Failure is not an option, but it doesn’t mean they will avoid it”.
11. CNN, April 6th 2002, “Transcript of Bush-Blair news conference”.
12. Daniel Eisenberg, Time, May 5th 2002, “We’re Taking Him Out”.
13. Sunday Times, May 1st 2005, “The secret Downing Street memo”.
14. Sunday Times, June 12th 2005, “Cabinet Office paper: Conditions for military action”.
15. Almost half the 1700 tons dropped on Tokyo on March 9th-10th 1945, killing 100,000 people.
16. Michael Smith, Sunday Times, May 29th 2005, “RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war”
17. Michael Smith, Sunday Times, June 26th 2005, “General admits to secret air war”.
18. CNN, July 17th 2002, “Scott Ritter: Facts Needed Before Iraq Attack”.
19. Bruce B. Auster, Mark Mazzetti & Edward T. Pound, US News & World Report, June 9th 2003, “Truth and Consequences”
20. The Times, April 28th 2005, “Full advice…”
21. BBC News, March 24th 2005, “Wilmshurst resignation letter”.
22. Les Roberts et al., The Lancet, Vol 364, November 20th 2004, “Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey”.
23. Nancy A. Youssef, Detroit Free Press, September 25th 2004, “More Iraqis killed by U.S. than by terror”.
posted by Nicolas Davies | 6:54 PM
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