Blair and Bush Planned Regime Change in Iraq

This is the under-reported story of the week. The London Times has discovered an apparent ‘secret war plan’–minutes of a meeting in July, 2002:

The political strategy proved to be arguing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed such a threat that military action had to be taken. However, at the July meeting Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said the case for war was “thin” as “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran”.

Straw suggested they should “work up” an ultimatum about weapons inspectors that would “help with the legal justification”. Blair is recorded as saying that “it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors”.

A separate secret briefing for the meeting said Britain and America had to “create” conditions to justify a war.

Now 88 members of Congress have signed a letter demanding Bush answer questions about these minutes and a US-UK agreement to attack Iraq. If you do some Google News searches, you’ll see how the American media is, for the most part, shamefully ignoring this story.