Bury Me Broken

Smoking Bullet in the Smoking Gun? [Daily Kos]

[via Daily Kos, this is the contribution of a diary from Rep. John Conyers, (D, MI)]

[Kos commentary] This diary from the esteemed Congressman is based upon the following story:

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown. The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive. The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make “regime change” in Iraq legal. Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that “the US had already begun ‘spikes of activity’ to put pressure on the regime”. The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did. ... Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admittedthis operation was designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf war. It was not until November 8 that the UN security council passed resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with “serious consequences” for failing to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. The briefing paper prepared for the July meeting — the same document that revealed the prime minister’s agreement during a summit with President George W Bush in April 2002 to back military action to bring about regime change — laid out the American war plans. ... The systematic targeting of Iraqi air defences appears to contradict Foreign Office legal guidance appended to the leaked briefing paper which said that the allied aircraft were only “entitled to use force in self-defence where such a use of force is a necessary and proportionate response to actual or imminent attack from Iraqi ground systems”.

[Kos commentary]These are revelations of not only systematic efforts to bring a war against Iraq in most of 2002, it appears to be evidence that war was BEING CONDUCTED against Iraq in 2002. Representative Conyers provides us some new information on the question he has presented to Secretaryof Defense Rumsfled and an action item.

This morning I read the new revelations, again the London Times, that British and U.S. aircraft had substantially stepped up their bombing activity in the summer of 2002 in an effort to "goad Saddam into War." If true, we would seem to have the "smoking bullet" to the "smoking gun" of the Downing Street Memo.

I have prepared a letter to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld detailing these new charges and asking for his response (see extended entry). Since the House is out of session next week, I plan to submit it by myself on Tuesday.

Of course, this new disclosure makes my letter asking 100,000 citizens to write to President Bush, located at www.johnconyers.com, all the more important As my back-office administrator is closed for the holiday, I do not expect to have specific numbers of signatures until Tuesday, however needless to say, the response has been overwhelming from everything I can gage thus far.

This is the most critical issue presently on the global horizon. At stake is the credibility, trustworthiness and aims of the United States government and America as well. Most people for or against the war ceded certain stipulations that the Bush administration made. If it turns out that the U.S. and Great Britain offensively provoked war, the entire landscape changes.

posted by niteskolar @ 7:15 PM