The United States went to war in Iraq to eliminate the threat
from Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction—which turned out
not to exist. As the war drags on, the strange case of the weapons
that were not there remains a matter of bitter debate, for it
underscores the fact that the goals and the motivations of the Bush
administration officials who argued for war are still largely
obscure. Yet in fact there exists crucial and little-publicized
evidence that lets us understand the secretive, even deceptive, way
that the the US launched a war of choice in the Middle East in
March 2003.
At the beginning of May 2005, just before the British elections,
the London Times published the "Downing Street Memo," the leaked
secret minutes of a July 2002 meeting of senior British
intelligence, foreign policy, and security officials. The memo made
clear that eight months before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush
had already decided on war. The British officials who attended the
meeting were told that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy," that the US wanted to avoid consulting the UN,
and that few plans were being made for the aftermath of war.
Largely ignored in the US press for weeks afterward, The New York
Review of Books published the memo in its entirety with an
extensive commentary by award-winning journalist Mark Danner.
Danner explains how the memo clarifies the broader—and largely
concealed—history of the events leading up to the Iraq war. He
shows that the Bush and Blair administrations advocated the
resumption of UN weapons inspections as a means not to avoid war
but to ensure it. Most importantly, Danner argues that in the face
of the memo''s clear evidence of deception, the press, public, and
Congress still have not held the administration responsible.
The Secret Way to War, with a preface by by Frank Rich, includes
Mark Danner''s strongly argued analysis of the Downing Street Memo
as well as the complete text of the memo and seven other leaked
British documents. Collectively, the documents show the members of
Tony Blair''s government and their counterparts in Washington
struggling to find legal and political rationales and strategies
for regime change in Iraq.
關於作者：
Mark Danner, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and
contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of The
Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War, The Road to
Illegitimacy: One Reporter''s Travels Through the 2000 Florida
Recount, and Torture and Truth. He is Professor of Journalism at
the University of California at Berkeley and Henry R. Luce
Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. He lives
in Berkeley and New York.
Frank Rich is an Associate Editor and columnist at The New York
Times.
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