We get memos

Today's front page (about frickin' time!) of the WaPo reports: Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan.

A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.

The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.

Note, this is not the same memo as the recent Downing Street Memo, it's a new one, a briefing paper prepared for the meeting that was the subject of the minutes of that meeting which had been previously leaked as the "Downing Street Memo" on May 1st, 2005.

The new memo, and other documents recently made available makes it clear that the British were concerned that the Bushistas weren't prepared for the aftermath of what the British clearly believed to be an illegal war of aggression (emphasis mine):

Now, disclosure of the memo written in advance of that meeting -- and other British documents recently made public -- show that Blair's aides were not just concerned about Washington's justifications for invasion but also believed the Bush team lacked understanding of what could happen in the aftermath.

In a section titled "Benefits/Risks," the July 21 memo states, "Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."

Saying that "we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective," the memo's authors point out, "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." The authors add, "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

I'm a little bit afraid that this will be treated by the press as old news. We had previously learned in reporting after-the-fact that the Pentagon had no post-war plans. That the neo-cons in Wolfie's cabal had effectively thrown the State Department's analysis of post-war conditions and plans, developed by people with decades of experience and training in such matters, right in the trash bucket in an internecine power-play between the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom.

However, that isn't the real news here. The real news is that this evidence further corroborates the original DSM's charges that the U.S. had no intention of pursuing peaceful means of disarming Saddam, but had every intent of effecting regime change by miliraty means as far back as April 2002. Fully 6 months before the administration sought permission from Congress with the empty promise that it would use that authority as a last possible resort.

As in all other "gates" before, the crime is not the issue, it's the cover-up, the lying that will be the undoing of this administration. Recent polls show that now 60% feel that the war in Iraq wasn't worth it. As many as 54% now believe that the war in Iraq has not made us safer. I think it is fair to say that the American public suspected all along that the shifting rationale for war -- from the constant fear-mongering by the most senior administration officials of Saddam's previous use of WMD, visions of mushroom clouds (Dick Cheney assured us that it was a fact that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear program), spurious ties to al Qaeda and 9/11 to today's propoganda that the intent all along was to spread democracy throughout the world -- was clear evidence that either the administration is trying to downplay its mistakes (afterall, this is the first president in history who has not admitted a mistake, except in judgement of certain of his selected advisors-turned-malcontents) or that indeed, that the plan all along was to oust Saddam. The American public, has given the administration the benefit of the doubt all along (helped by propoganda and the tireless whurlitzer of the rightwing talkosphere), but I suspect that with the current sentiment of the majority opinion, that revelations the prove that the administration was lying all along will no longer receive that benefit. American's don't like being lied to.

This Thursday's hearings on the DSM should indeed prove to be interesting. At the very least, it will keep this story on the front burner, which is where it belongs.