Bombshell As Six More British Documents Leaked!

Read the text of all six documents here at Information Clearing House (via Raw Story).

Somebody in the UK government is seriously pissed off!

The following sections are hand-picked (by me) from the Iraq options paper:

A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to Law Officers advice, none currently exists. This makes moving quickly to invade legally very difficult. We should therefore consider a staged approach...

PS and Security Council unity would facilitate a specific demand that Iraq re-admit the UN inspectors. Our aim would be to tell Saddam to admit inspectors or face the risk of military action... It would put real pressure on Saddam either to submit to meaningful inspections or to lash out...

[We should] continue to make clear (without overtly espousing regime change) our view that Iraq would be better off without Saddam. We could trail the rosy future for Iraq without him in a ‘Contract with the Iraqi People’...

The return of UN weapons inspectors would allow greater scrutiny of Iraqi WMD programmes and of Iraqi forces in general. If they found significant evidence of WMD, were expelled or, in face of an ultimatum, not re-admitted in the first place, then this could provide legal justification for large-scale military action...

... there is no greater threat now that [Saddam] will use WMD than there has been in recent years...

The US has lost confidence in containment. Some in government want Saddam removed. The success of Operation Enduring Freedom, distrust of UN sanctions and inspection regimes, and unfinished business from 1991 are all factors. Washington believes the legal basis for an attack on Iraq already exists. Nor will it necessarily be governed by wider political factors...

In considering the options for regime change below, we need to first consider what sort of Iraq we want? There are two possibilities: • a Sunni military strongman... or • a representative broadly democratic government. This would be Sunni-led...[actually, or course, it is now Shia-led... gandhi]

The predominant group in the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella organization led by Ahmad Ghalabi [i.e. Chalabi], a Shia and convicted fraudster, popular on Capitol Hill. The other major group, the Iraqi National Accord (INA), espouses moderate Arab Socialism and is led by another Shia, Ayad Allawi. Neither group has a military capability and both are badly penetrated by Iraqi Intelligence. In 1996, a CIA attempt to still opposition groups ended in wholesale executions. Most Iraqis see the INC/INA as Western Stooges...

Most Shia would like to have a greater say in Iraqi government, but not necessarily control...

We have looked at three options for achieving regime change (we dismissed assassination of Saddam Hussein as an option because it would be illegal)...

Of itself, REGIME CHANGE has no basis in international law...

This following bit, in hindsight, is probably the key part of the text, analyzing how UN resolutions could be manipulated to justify an invasion:

Currently, offensive military action against Iraq can only be justified if Iraq is held to be n breach of the Gulf War ceasefire resolution, 687. 687 imposed obligations on Iraq with regard to the elimination of WMD and monitoring these obligations. But 687 never terminated the authority to use force mandated in UNSCR 678 (1990). Thus a violation of 687 can revive teh [sic] authorization to use force in 678.

As the ceasefire was proclaimed by the Security Council in 687, it is for the Council to decide whether a breach of obligations has occurred. There is a precedent. UNSCR 1205 (1998), passed after the expulsion of the UN inspectors, stated that in doing so Iraq had acted in flagrant violation of its obligations under 687. In our view, this revived the authority for the use of force under 678 and underpinned Operation Desert Fox. In contrast to general legal opinion, the US asserts the right of individual Member States to determine whether Iraq has breached 687, regardless of whether the Council has reached this assessment.

For the P5 and the majority of the Council to take the view that Iraq was in breach of 687:

• they would need to be convinced that Iraq was in breach of its obligations regarding WMD, and ballistic missiles. Such proof would need to be incontrovertible and of large-scale activity. Current intelligence is insufficiently robus to meet this criterion. Even with overriding proof China, France and Russia, in particular, would need considerable lobbying to approve or acquiesce in a new resolution authorizing military action against Iraq. Concessions in other policy areas might be needed. However, many Western states, at least, would not wish to oppose the US on such a major issue; or

• if P5 unity could be obtained, Iraq refused to readmit UN inspectors after a clear ultimatum by the UN Security Council; or

• the UN inspectors were re-admitted to Iraq and found sufficient evidence of WMD activity or were again expelled trying to do so.

As I said previously, none of these possibile options was realized and even Kofi Annan has stated that the war was illegal.