DSM: The Prequels

By golly, the US media are waking up to the Downing Street Memo. In fact, figuring that where there's one memo to leak, there must be more, The Los Angeles Times has borrowed the full collection from The Times of London writer Michael Smith, for the latest chapter in how the Bush and Blair administrations were figuring out how to justify invading Iraq while telling the rest of us that they really wanted to avoid war.

The latest collection, from March 2002 in preparation for the April 2002 Bush-Blair summit, documents the doubts of various UK officials to US plans. "U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda is so far frankly unconvincing," wrote Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. David Manning, then chief foreign policy advisor and now ambassador to the U.S., reported to Blair on a meeting with Condoleezza Rice -- "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed" -- that there were no answers to what he called "the big questions":

• How to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified;

• What value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition;

• How to coordinate a US/allied military campaign with internal opposition (assuming there is any);

• What happens the morning after.

Good questions. Too bad the US media weren't asking them all along.