Tony Blair On Downing Street Memo

Or, how the faction of context and nuance doesn't care much for either one.

Published on June 29, 2005 By stutefish In War on Terror

The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has finally spoken out about the "Downing Street Memo". http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050629/ap_on_re_eu/blair_interview

Bottom line: “What people forget about that memo is that that (it) occurred nine months before the conflict. ... So whatever issues there were, we resolved them ultimately by saying we have got to give it one last chance to work peacefully.”

Yes, that's right, sports fans: Even if the Bush Adminstration had already decided to go to war, they then decided to let diplomacy have one more chance. And as we all know, diplomacy failed. I guess it's a good thing somebody was working on a contingency plan, huh?

Comments

zinkadoodle

on Jun 29, 2005

and, while they were "giving diplomacy one last chance", they were dropping tons of bombs on Iraq to "soften" em up, and hope they retaliated. With diplomacy like that, who need Congress or the UN's approval?

stutefish

on Jun 30, 2005

Well, as Americans, we need Congress's approval, which we got. U.N. approval? Not so much.

About the bombs... it's not like we weren't at war with Iraq already, exchanging fire with them every day as part of enforcing the no-fly zones. In fact, by the terms of our truce with Saddam after the Gulf War, nothing less than regime change was already justified by his violations of that truce. We legitimately could--and obviously did--drop bombs on Iraq at any time. Putting the Big Stick on prominent display is part of diplomacy, too. Some would say that it's a part of diplomacy that was long overdue in our dealings with Saddam. If he had taken the message of the bombs to heart, instead of naively believing in the power of French diplomacy to block American beatings, those bombs would've been the end of it, instead of the prologue to what came next.

Anyway, the bombs were appropriate even in the context of enforcing the no-fly zones. If they also prepared the way for a possible future invasion of Iraq, well, that's exactly the sort of eficient use of limited resources that good Generals always strive for.

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