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The "Downing Street memo" (or the "Downing Street Minutes"), sometimes described by critics of the Iraq War as the "smoking gun memo", is the note of a secret 23 July 2002 meeting of senior British government, defence and intelligence figures discussing the build-up to the war, which included direct reference to classified United States policy of the time. The name refers to 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British prime minister. The memo recorded the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) as expressing the view following his recent visit to Washington that "(W. ) Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It quoted Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as saying it was clear that Bush had "made up his mind" to take military action but that "the case was thin." Straw also noted that Iraq retained "WMD capability" and that "Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN." The military asked about the consequences "if Saddam used WMD on day one," posing Kuwait or Israel as potential targets. Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith warned that justifying the invasion on legal grounds would be difficult. However, the meeting took place several months before the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, the resolution eventually used as the legal basis for the invasion of Iraq. UNR687 also provided a pre-existing basis, as it required Iraq to divest itself of "100%" of all WMD capacity, which the Memo agreed it had not. A copy of the memo was obtained by British journalist Michael Smith and published in the ''The Sunday Times'' in May 2005, on the eve of British elections. Smith stated that the memo was equivalent to the Pentagon Papers which exposed American intentions in the Vietnam War and alleged the American media did not report more about it do due a perceived bias towards support for the war. Though its authenticity has never been seriously challenged, the British and American governments have stated that the contents do not accurately reflect their official policy positions at the time. == Introduction == The memo was first published in ''The Sunday Times'' on 1 May 2005, during the last days of the UK general election campaign. It went largely unremarked in the U.S. press at first, but was heavily covered in progressive blogs such as those on Daily Kos, because of a remark attributed to Richard Dearlove (then MI6 head) that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed (the U.S. ) around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein from power, which was interpreted to show that US intelligence on Iraq prior to the war was deliberately falsified, rather than simply mistaken. As this issue began to be covered by American media (''Los Angeles Times'' on 12 May 2005, ''Washington Post'' on 13 May 2005, two other main allegations stemming from the memo arose: that the UN weapons inspection process was manipulated to provide a legal pretext for the war, and that pre-war air strikes were deliberately ramped up in order to soften Iraqi infrastructure in preparation for war, prior to the October U.S. Senate vote permitting the invasion. Some elements of the U.S. media have portrayed the document as faked or fraudulent, and Dana Perino referred in her daily White House press briefing on 4 December 2008 to the fact that the Bush administration has "debunked" the document previously. The British have tacitly validated its authenticity (as when Tony Blair replied to a press conference question by saying "that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations."〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=whitehouse.gov )〕) A group of 131 members of Congress led by John Conyers, repeatedly requested that President George W. Bush respond to the contents of the document. A resolution of inquiry was filed by Representative Barbara Lee, which would request that the President and the State Department turn over all relevant information with regard to US policy towards Iraq. The resolution had 70 co-sponsors.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Thomas Query for current number )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Downing Street memo」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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