Here's
another story the "media" won't dig into because the principals in the
event are not believed to have soiled any blue dresses -- but this one's
a bit peculiar. From the Guardian, "Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war
revealed in secret memo":
Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality and despite the absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the war published today.
A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 -- nearly two months before the invasion -- reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme... (#)
Nothing new there. What's peculiar is what this memo alleges. Among other items, it says
-- Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colors." Mr Bush added, "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]..."
Okay, hold it...
Now Bush has already said that if he knew in early 2003 what he knows now, he would still have invaded Iraq.
I believe him. He's the sort of guy who'll wiretap your phone to get
information he can use to obtain court permission for wiretapping your
phone. I wouldn't put impersonating the United Nations in order to win
their support past him, either. Stupid is, after all, as stupid does.
But did he really say that to Tony Blair? In my head, I can hear him saying those words. Did he say them?
There's
more than plenty of other evidence that the Bush administration was
hell-bent on invading Iraq, and no amount of White House spin or "media"
silence on the matter will ever restore Bush's buckshot-riddled
credibility. I bring this up for one reason: What if the memo is wrong?
Think
about this. Bush authorizes American U2s with UN colors to fly over
Iraqi air space. Saddam Hussein finds out about it and orders the planes
shot down (assuming he has the missiles Bush & Co. say he has).
Whatever happens next, the incident makes the news -- "Saddam Fires at
UN Reconnaissance Planes." The first entity to start asking questions
will most likely be the UN. And when its people find out that none of
their planes were over Iraq when the missiles were launched, given the
Bush administration's months-long and quite public obsession with
overthrowing Saddam, I think the UN would request to have a long,
interesting chat with the American government. If Bush said what the
memo claims, then even though I'm wrong, Bush is a hell of a lot more
stupid that I thought.
But if the memo's wrong, then remember: You read it at the Medley first...
