Well, it only took about six to eight weeks for the Washington Post to jump in with both feet on the Downing Street Memos, but they did so with a splash on Tuesday's A01. It's too early still to get a shot of the print version, but the length suggests it's going to be above the fold.
The article is actually a chronological rundown through the memos, showing the irresolution of the British inner circle. By now those who have read the memos or MSM accounts thereof, the bits are not particularly new. But WaPo does sprinkle the text of the memos with anonymously sourced asides, seemingly always smoothly delivered, perhaps spoken whisperingly around a hotel bar marble column:
A U.S. official who observed the process said British objections followed a traditional path. "To some extent the mandarins were playing the role they were acculturated to play in the Washington-London dialectic, which is always to play devil's advocate," he said. "I'm not saying they were sanguine -- they weren't -- but since time immemorial they have always played Athens to our Rome, working hard to remove us from a tendency toward what they consider impetuosity or misguided idealism."
No, that sounds more like something said sodden with mid-level whiskey, sunk into a leather lounge chair and said a little too loudly in the Dupont Circle Quality Inn. But anyway, Frankel gets the information out, and paints the right picture (IMO) of where the British were. Everyone certainly feared the idea of Saddam having WMD, and it certainly seemed like believing he had them was a pragmatic course--but without UN inspections since 1998 it was impossible to know. Which is of course why the British sought to earn justification through an ultimatum of a new resolution, and why they were so relieved when the Americans assented. Or were they just trying to cover their legal necks?
The briefing paper also said that a Security Council resolution setting up the return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq could be drafted in a way that Hussein would find unacceptable. "It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject (because he is unwilling to accept unfettered access) and which would not be regarded as unreasonable by the international community," the memo reported.
The well-applied term for what they're describing is 'wrongfooting'--to gain a tactical advantage by putting your opponent off-balance. Let's be clear: the British government is agreeing to go along with the Bush administration's progress towards war, but they would like it if the US somehow baited Saddam into it first, so they would look better and more countries would sign on. Where'd the term come from in this case? From the memos themselves:
1 Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, came to Sunday lunch on 17 March.
2 On Iraq I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used with Condi Rice last week, We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option. It would be a tough sell for us domestically, and probably tougher elsewhere in Europe. The US could go it alone if it wanted to. But if it wanted to act with partners, there had to be a strategy for building support for military action against Saddam. I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN SCRs and the critical importance of the MEPP as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy. If all this could be accomplished skilfully, we were fairly confident that a number of countries would come on board.
Well, putting aside the novel theory that a good plan for a worthy cause attracts its own cheerleaders, if I was British I'd be even more disgusted with my government than I am now. It's one thing to charge ahead blindly because you have convinced yourselves via echo chamber that what you are doing is perfectly correct. It's quite another to go into a robbery shaking your head and worrying about what George is going to do with that hand cannon in his pants. That would have been the time for Tony Blair to excuse himself for a last whizz, head for the bathroom, and crawl out the window.
--TJ
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