NEW DOCs-Demonstrate BUSH&BLAIR's Intentions to "SUCKER SADDAM INTO WAR"

[kpete]

A War Conspiracy Documented
John Prados
February 21, 2007


John Prados is a senior analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. His current book is Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA. The Polo Step slides can be examined on the National Security Archive website.

The now-infamous Downing Street documents showed how President George Bush managed his move to war by fitting intelligence to his policy, and by refusing to accept the reports of United Nations inspectors who could find no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Now there is a new hot document that confirms that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair intended to sucker Saddam into war. It demonstrates that this aim was present long before the Bush-Blair talks, and indeed that provocation formed an integral feature of the U.S. war plan.

A January 31, 2003 meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair clearly shows the two leaders discussing ways to provoke Saddam Hussein so as to justify war, indicating premeditation. Last week the National Security Archive in Washington posted the U. S. war plan—the set of briefing slides used by Central Command (CENTCOM) chief General Tommy Franks to brief President Bush on “Polo Step,” CENTCOM’s Iraq invasion scheme. The PowerPoint slides were prepared for a series of presidential meetings held from December 2001 to August 2002. The slides summarized CENTCOM’s buildup and maneuver concepts for Bush’s deliberations. Bush backed Franks’ concept of “adjusting” Iraqi defenses by executing what amounted to a covert offensive air campaign. They would use forces already in the Persian Gulf region for the ostensible purpose of enforcing no-fly zones created after the first Gulf War. TomPaine.com has previously covered this operation (“The War Before the War ,” June 24, 2005), but the new evidence establishes an explicit link between the aerial offensive and the Iraq war plans.

................

The September strikes corresponded to the White level that General Franks described in May and August slides. That was described as an air operation of five to seven days’ duration involving about 1,000 flights by coalition aircraft. This effort was supposed to have been triggered by the shootdown of a U.S. aircraft, an Iraqi link to a terrorist act, or confirmed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) within Iraq. After that strikes concentrated overwhelmingly upon shaping the battlefield rather than their supposed purpose of countering interference with the no-fly zones. In January 2003, it was reported that there had been almost two attacks on higher echelon Iraqi military targets for every one aimed at air defense or radar sites.

We know from history that Saddam’s air defenses never did destroy an aircraft in the no-fly zones—not even a Predator drone. Nor were there Iraqi terrorist attacks or prewar confirmations of WMDs. Saddam refused to supply the provocation that Bush wanted. Not to be put off, Bush simply dispensed with the triggers and moved ahead on his aerial offensive. When, at the height of the 2004 electoral season, President Bush told reporters that before the war his administration had been dealing only with Desert Badger, he was being disingenuous. This decoupling of the air attacks from any relation to actual Iraqi activity is the smoking gun that makes plain Bush’s aggressive intent. Of course, an actual invasion of Iraq could not be done covertly, and that fact led directly to the Bush-Blair conversation in the Oval Office on January 31, 2003. Some justification for war remained necessary. Bush never got it. The prewar air campaign was purposeful, targeted and premeditated, one more manipulation on the road to tragedy.


more at:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/21/a_war_conspiracy_documented.php

[sabra]

1. interesting slide from that 2002 meeting

triggers to start some kind of military action against Iraq

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. More evidence that bush is a war criminal.

[Old and In the Way]

3. The planning started in Cheney's Secret Energy meetings.

This was a premeditated act of war to steal Iraq's nationalized oil assets and provide the Bush administration's friends in Saudi Arabia with a convenient buffer from the region's Shia majority.

Open up those meeting minutes and the whole argument for invading Iraq evaporates.

[Blackhatjack]

4. Agreed --Energy Meeting Obviously Addressed Coming War w/Iraq...n/t

[JohnyCanuck]

5. Seems pretty obvious

For the bully, it always helps in the court of public opinion and in PR terms if his aggression, bullying and violence can be portrayed as a reluctant self-defense against the unprovoked violence of an unreasoning and irrational madman.

Of course this is what the anti-war movement was saying all along - Dick, Jr. and the neocon, PNACer chickenhawks had a hard-on to invade Iraq as an object lesson to the rest of the Muslim Middle East that if they didn't fall in line they could be shockanawed too. All the blowharding that went on at the UN and in the press re. the WMD and Saddam's evil intentions to rain death and destruction in the form of mushroom clouds and chemical/biological agents (dispersed from radio-controlled model aircraft) on the land of the freedom lovers was just so much fear mongering and propaganda. It was obviously designed to bring the public on board with the idea that the war was absolutely necessary. The propaganda arm of the military-industrial complex, ie. the corporate whore media, did the job expected of them and acted as mouthpieces and amplifiers for the warmongers propagandistic lies and exaggerations rather than as dispassionate and objective investigators, journalists and reporters. No surprises there (not on my part anyway).

"Nazi leader Hermann Goering, interviewed by Gustave Gilbert during
the Easter recess of the Nuremberg trials, 1946 April 18, quoted in
Gilbert's book 'Nuremberg Diary.'

Goering: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some
poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that
he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in
England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is
understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who
determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the
people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or
a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some
say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the
United States only Congress can declare wars.

Goering: Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the
bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in
any country."

http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=235519

[Poiuyt]

6. Wasn't Bush planning on painting a US plane in UN colors and trying to

provoke Iraq into shooting at it?

[indepat]

7. Wasn't Saddam suckered into Gulf War I by our lady ambassador green-lighting an Iraqi

invasion of Kuwait, saying in effect that the US would not object/interfere? Or am I just confused or have a case of bad memory.

[Martin Eden]

8. But chimpy didn't want war ... it was the hardest decision he ever made

He wouldn't lie about something as consequential as war, would he?