This is the first mainstream US story I'm aware of which takes on the full weight of the six "new" (March 2002) memos.
British officials believed the U.S. favored military force a year before the war, documents show.
By John Daniszewski, Times Staff Writer
--snip--
The new documents indicate that top British officials believed that by March 2002, Washington was already leaning heavily toward toppling Hussein by military force. Condoleezza Rice, the current secretary of State who was then Bush's national security advisor, was described as enthusiastic about "regime change."
Although British officials said in the documents that they did not think Iraq's weapons programs posed an immediate threat and that they were dubious of any claimed links between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda, they indicated that they were willing to join in a campaign to topple Hussein as long as the plan would succeed and was handled with political and legal care.
The documents contain little discussion about whether to mount a military campaign. The focus instead is on how the campaign should be presented to win the widest support and the importance for Britain of working through the United Nations so an invasion could be seen as legal under international law.
Michael Smith, the defense writer for the Times of London who revealed the Downing Street minutes in a story May 1, provided a full text of the six new documents to the Los Angeles Times.
--snip--
The article goes on to indulge in a quotefest:
* "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed."
* "U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda is so far frankly unconvincing,"
* "The issue of weapons inspectors must be handled in a way that would persuade Europe and wider opinion that the U.S. was conscious of the international framework, and the insistence of many countries on the need for a legal basis. Renewed refusal by Saddam to accept unfettered inspections would be a powerful argument,"
* "In sum, despite the considerable difficulties, the use of overriding force in a ground campaign is the only option that we can be confident will remove Saddam and bring Iraq back into the international community,"
* "The U.S. has lost confidence in containment ... Some in government want Saddam removed. The success of Operation Enduring Freedom, distrust of U.N. sanctions and inspection regimes, and unfinished business from 1991 are all factors.
* "Washington believes the legal basis for an attack already exists. Nor will it necessarily be governed by wider political factors. The U.S. may be willing to work with a smaller coalition than we think desirable"
It ends with the view that the March 8 Iraq "options" paper (one of the earliest of the six documents) had already concluded that the only credible path to regime change was military action in the form of an invasion, but that, since that would have "no basis under international law", the optimum course of action would be to persuade the UN Security Council that Iraq hadn't fulfilled its obligations to rid itself of WMD.
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