At a news conference on Tuesday, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair denied "fixing" the facts in order to provide a justification for the invasion of Iraq and argued that the decision to take military action was a result of Saddam Hussein's inaction.
Blair's comments:
Well, I can respond to that very easily. No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all. And let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations. Now, no one knows more intimately the discussions that we were conducting as two countries at the time than me. And the fact is we decided to go to the United Nations and went through that process, which resulted in the November 2002 United Nations resolution, to give a final chance to Saddam Hussein to comply with international law. He didn't do so. And that was the reason why we had to take military action.
But all the way through that period of time, we were trying to look for a way of managing to resolve this without conflict. As it happened, we weren't able to do that because -- as I think was very clear -- there was no way that Saddam Hussein was ever going to change the way that he worked, or the way that he acted.
Bush's comments:
Well, I -- you know, I read kind of the characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in the middle of his race. I'm not sure who "they dropped it out" is, but -- I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there. (Laughter.) And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth.
My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently, that took place in London happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- look, both us of didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option. The consequences of committing the military are -- are very difficult. The hardest things I do as the President is to try to comfort families who've lost a loved one in combat. It's the last option that the President must have -- and it's the last option I know my friend had, as well.
And so we worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully, take a -- put a united front up to Saddam Hussein, and say, the world speaks, and he ignored the world. Remember, 1441 passed the Security Council unanimously. He made the decision. And the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.
Neither leader managed to articulate a satisfactory response to the very serious allegations presented in the so-called "Downing Street Memo" released last month. In that memo, it was revealed that President Bush had essentially made the decision to invade Iraq by at least July of 2002 and that intelligence information would be "fixed" around an invasion of Iraq. In response to the memo, and to a lesser extent lingering questions about the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, there is a growing interest in the possibility of impeaching President Bush. While Representative John Conyers has called for an investigation into the claims presented in the memo and has charged President Bush with "deliberate deception," others have suggested that it is time to get serious about the possibility of impeaching Bush. Since Bush's election in 2000, there have been various calls for his impeachment, although they have typically originated on the far "left" and have focused on collecting signatures via the internet. A week ago, Ralph Nader had a column in the Boston Globe calling for impeachment and activists have launched a campaign to request an investigation into the Downing Street memo with the hope that it may lead to impeachment. Realistically, there is very little chance that President Bush will be impeached, although organizing around the Downing Memo may provide an opportunity to shift focus onto the urgency of ending the occupation of Iraq.
