Fixing Intelligence, breaking Iraq

While everyone ponders the future of the Pentagon and a broken Iraq now that Bush -- or rather those behind the firing of Rumsfeld -- has tapped yet another Iran-Contra goombah for the final days of the administration, The Osterley Times is pointing to further confirmation of the Downing Street Memos, as though that were needed.

The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy:

A former diplomat has revealed that the British mission to the United Nations opposed the policy of regime change in Iraq but was ordered by London to change its position in the lead-up to war.

The disclosure was made to MPs yesterday by Carne Ross, a member of the mission who resigned in protest at the Iraq war. He told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the US government was repeatedly warned by British diplomats that Iraq would fall apart if Saddam Hussein was toppled. But from mid-2002 instructions were received to change that view to fall in with the Bush administration.
...
"I took part in the bilateral discussion between the State Department and the Foreign Office for four years. One of the items repeatedly on the agenda was regime change. Whenever that item came up, the leader of our delegation would say, with emphasis: 'We do not believe regime change is a good idea in Iraq. The reason we do not believe that is because we believe Iraq will break up and there will be chaos if you do that'. That view will have been recorded in the telegrams that have remained secret, and will do for years. That was emphatically the unified view of the Foreign Office.

"That view changed in mid-2002. There was no basis for changing the view from what was going on inside Iraq. What changed was our view of what the future policy would be."

The policy was set for invasion and regime change. We know this. The evidence is ample. This is direct violation of the Nuremberg Principles and Geneva Convention. And yet Pelosi has already said that impeachment is "off the table." Why? The current occupants of the White House are war criminals and should be turfed for high crimes and misdemeanors. There is a very good reason why people keep asking Pelosi if she'll call for impeachment. Because she should.