The British had other reasons for helping to cover up the fraudulence of the White Paper in question. As Robin Cook pointed out in his published diary, Point of Departure, if Blair were to acknowledge that he knew (or learned) at any stage that the information he had supplied Parliament was (or turned out to be) untrue, then he was obliged to inform Parliament of that fact. Blair has never however taken back or corrected any of the false claims he made before the war.

Here is part of what Cook has to say in his diary entry for March 5, 2003:

The most revealing exchange came when we talked about Saddam’s arsenal. I told him, “It’s clear from the private briefing I have had that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction in a sense of weapons that could strike at strategic cities. But he probably does have several thousand battlefield chemical munitions. Do you never worry that he might use them against British troops?”

“Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use.”

There were two distinct elements to this exchange that sent me away deeply troubled. The first was that the timetable to war was plainly not driven by the progress of the UN weapons inspections. Tony made no attempt to pretend that what Hans Blix might report would make any difference to the countdown to invasion.

The second troubling element to our conversation was that Tony did not try to argue me out of the view that Saddam did not have real weapons of mass destruction that were designed for strategic use against city populations and capable of being delivered with reliability over long distances. I had now expressed that view to both the chairman of the JIC and to the prime minister and both had assented in it.

At the time I did believe it likely that Saddam had retained a quantity of chemical munitions for tactical use on the battlefield. These did not pose “a real and present danger to Britain” as they were not designed for use against city populations and by definition could only threaten British personnel if we were to deploy them on the battlefield within range of Iraqi artillery.

I had now twice been told that even these chemical shells had been put beyond operational use in response to the pressure from intrusive inspections.

I have no reason to doubt that Tony Blair believed in September 2002 that Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction ready for firing within 45 minutes. What was clear from this conversation was that he did not believe it himself in March this year.

This in turn begs another chain of questions. If No 10 accepted that Saddam had no real weapons of mass destruction which he could credibly deliver against city targets and if they themselves believed he could not reassemble his chemical weapons in a credible timescale for use on the battlefield, just how much of a threat did they really think Saddam represented?

I have long been puzzled that the contentious claims in the September dossier were quietly dropped by ministers as war drew nearer. In the crucial debate on March l8, no minister claimed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction ready to be fired in 45 minutes, or that he had rebuilt chemical weapons plants, or that he had sought uranium from Niger.

Yet in that debate the government had its back to the wall and outside the chamber the whips were deploying every technique of persuasion available in their armoury. Why did ministers not repeat inside the chamber their strongest lines on the threat from Saddam unless they themselves had come to recognise they were disputed?

They had been given plenty of cause to come to doubt their own claims. The scepticism about the September dossier which has surfaced from within UK intelligence is a pale reflection of the raging controversy in the US. Colin Powell invested four whole days, before his presentation to the security council in March, grilling the CIA on the reliability of the intelligence he was going to deploy. By the end of it he had decided not to use the claim about the Niger connection on uranium and he made no mention of weapons of mass destruction ready for firing in 45 minutes.

Given the intimate relationship between State Department and Foreign Office it is implausible that his cautious scepticism did not become known in London.

The public controversy over the September dossier has focused on whether No 10 really believed in its claims at the time of its publication, and whether all of its claims were sourced in reliable intelligence. There is, though, another and even more disturbing question. Did No 10 still believe in its own claims six months later and how many of those claims had been undermined by subsequent intelligence and analysis?

This leads to the gravest of political questions. The rules of the Commons require ministers to correct the record as soon as they are aware that they may have misled parliament. If the government did come to know that the State Department did not trust the claims in the September dossier and that some of even their own top experts did not believe them, should they not have told parliament before asking the Commons to vote for war on a false prospectus?

Here’s a link to extracts from Cook’s diary: Point of Departure.

I’ve written extensively about the importance of this diary for reconstructing the pre-war manipulation of intelligence in Britain, for example in this post: Robin Cook on DSM – Critical “new” Document.

susan @ 46

Since we’re talking about yellow cake, shouldn’t we have some kind of official statement from all of our Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year winners? ;)

And this via Josh Marshall:

Late Update: Then there’s the discrepancy which some have noticed between Ari’s testimony and that of John Dickerson, which Booman discusses. http://tinyurl.com/2ec8rh

Will the defense call Dickerson to cast doubt on Fleischer’s credibility?

Dicey proposition, and I think not, because even Dickerson’s version of events confirms Fleischer’s essential point: that Scooter gave him the goods on Plame, and gave him the wink wink nudge nudge to tell reporters about it “on the QT.”

My own take is that Dickerson, after seeing what was going on with Cooper, didn’t want to admit that he’d actually gotten Plame’s name from Fleischer.

But it does make me wonder about David Gregory, who has been relatively aggressive about asking questions about the Plame affair at WH pressers. He never reported Plame’s identity — perhaps because he thought he shouldn’t? Perhaps because he knew what CPD was? But he seems to have been much more interested in the story than most of the WH press corpse. He is, after all, the reporter who elicited Scott McClellan’s exculpation of Rove.

I wonder if Gregory was interviewed by Fitz?

My suspicion is that Fitz would never have gone ahead with the Ari testimony if he didn’t have backup testimony from at least ONE of the three reporters present. I bet that he has TWO (Gregory and the other, female, reporter ~ sorry forgot her name), and Dickerson was irrelevant…or perhaps from his other sources Dickerson’s ability to hear Ari’s statements was diminished.

Fitz may not have called or subpoenaed Dickerson simply because he knew that it would be impugned testimony. Why call someone that a) doesn’t help, and b) you’ll have to charge with perjury later?

Of course Dickerson will likely say something like “I didn’t hear Ari say that…and I’m sure I would have recalled it…but maybe I was distracted by all those kids singing.” Or something. You want POSITIVE EVIDENCE.

And I don’t think that Dickerson was even on the Defenses witness list…at least Dickerson himself asserts he hasn’t been interviewed by the Defense and certainly not subpoenaed by them. So if the DEFENSE thinks that Dickerson’s testimony will not be helpful or relevant…one has to wonder!

Not sure if you are still around, but something is bugging me and you are the person most likely to know if the following is new information.

There is a document from the trial (DX 64) that is a copy of a congressional notification that was faxed to the White House (Hannah and Libby) on June 9, 2003. In paragraph 20, there is the following passage:

“In the same message, State/INR also advocated that the actual documents obtained from Embassy Rome be passed to INVO. An exchange of REDACTED messages over the next few days shows REDACTED attempted to honor the State/INR requests.”

In paragraph 24, the document says:

On 4 February 2003, a note from CIA/WINPAC, was sent to REDACTED at the US Mission to the IAEA in Vienna and the United Namtions Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) office in New York. the note contained copies of the original language documents obtained by Embassy Rome. Instructions in the note indicated the information cound be passed to IAEA/INVO’s Baute, which was interpreted as permission to pass the original documents. As a result, the original documents were passed to UNMOVIC who passed them to INVO.”

Doesn’t that sound like somebody at WINPAC didn’t want to pass those documents to INVO? BTW, the date on paragraph 20 was nine days before the State of the Union.

One other thing, I’d still like to see the 60 Minutes report on the Niger fraud that got pulled to show fraudulent Bush service records instead. I still think that was orchestrated by the evil-doers…

The thing that really gripped me during Martin’s testimony was how much attention is paid to spin. It almost seems that is all the WH & OVP are concerned with..

Strikes me that this is because they do not have to “think” about events, “ponder” alternatives, “choose” between possible courses of action. Their minds are made up. Their plans are laid. Spin is a part of execution, in their minds. It is the only responsive, quasi-improvisational thing they do.

(For instance, though it is impossible to prove at this point and is not just pure but plainly wild speculation, I bet I’m not the only person to suspect that plans for the invasion and occupation of the middle east were cinched in Cheney’s secret Energy policy meetings with big oil. I know, I know, that’s the far shores of tin hat conspiracy theories. Akin to marxist fantasies of yore. And yet… and yet… the more one learns, the less fanciful it seems.)

To return to the point, they don’t think much about anything important. That’s already been done by the Deciders, don’t you know.

A quick hello from the airport, am en route from Russia to the US.

THANK YOU for all you have done. Somehow thank you doesn’t seem like enough.

No, eRiposte’s post isn’t the single bombshell surprise that many of us thought would explode from this trial (or subsequent ones), ala something like the Nixon tapes. It is, instead, the culmination of metriculous work over a long period of time. It weaves together the most clear and compelling evidence that, well, let’s start saying it out loud, “cells” of the military industrial complex have infiltrated a sufficient number of goverment positions in both the US and Great Britain that the interest of war, itself, is in a dominating position of power in these two countries. (Sound radical? Heck, even Eisenhower saw this coming.) If you think that Islamo-fascist cells within our country pose a threat to your life and liberty, baby, you ain’t seen nuthin’ compared to what these boys and girls can foment.

The information in eRiposte’s reveleation provide the kind of CLEAR evidence of conspiracy between members of the Executive and Legislative branches of our government that, when described to a listening populace, have the potential to change the course of a nation. There is also the element of INTERNATIONAL conspiracy between members of the US and British governments in the form of collusion to hide evidence.

Et,en Francais, sans doute.

June 13, 2006, 01:39 PM EDT
Jonah Goldberg has this one line post up at The Corner. So where does Karl Rove report to get his reputation back?

Maybe the womb? I wonder if there’s a contest here? It could get really obscene …