Mark Danner, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of three books: The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War; The Road to Illegitimacy: One Reporter's Travels Through the 2000 Florida Recount; and Torture and Truth. Danner's work has been honored with many awards, including a National Magazine Award, three Overseas Press Awards, and an Emmy. In June 1999, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. He is Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. He divides his time between Berkeley and New York. His work is archived at markdanner.com. »

The Secret Way To War

The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History

By Mark Danner
Preface by Frank Rich

The United States went to war in Iraq to eliminate the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction—which turned out not to exist. As the war drags on, the strange case of the weapons that were not there remains a matter of bitter debate, for it underscores the fact that the goals and the motivations of the Bush administration officials who argued for war are still largely obscure. Yet in fact there exists crucial and little-publicized evidence that lets us understand the secretive, even deceptive, way that the the US launched a war of choice in the Middle East in March 2003.

At the beginning of May 2005, just before the British elections, the London Times published the "Downing Street Memo," the leaked secret minutes of a July 2002 meeting of senior British intelligence, foreign policy, and security officials. The memo made clear that eight months before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush had already decided on war. The British officials who attended the meeting were told that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," that the US wanted to avoid consulting the UN, and that few plans were being made for the aftermath of war.

Largely ignored in the US press for weeks afterward, The New York Review of Books published the memo in its entirety with an extensive commentary by award-winning journalist Mark Danner. Danner explains how the memo clarifies the broader—and largely concealed—history of the events leading up to the Iraq war. He shows that the Bush and Blair administrations advocated the resumption of UN weapons inspections as a means not to avoid war but to ensure it. Most importantly, Danner argues that in the face of the memo's clear evidence of deception, the press, public, and Congress still have not held the administration responsible.

The Secret Way to War, with a preface by by Frank Rich, includes Mark Danner's strongly argued analysis of the Downing Street Memo as well as the complete text of the memo and seven other leaked British documents. Collectively, the documents show the members of Tony Blair's government and their counterparts in Washington struggling to find legal and political rationales and strategies for regime change in Iraq.

Read an interview with Mark Danner conducted by Tom Englehardt of tomdispatch.com.

Also see:

Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 By Joan Didion Preface by Frank Rich Joan Didion describes how, since September 11, 2001, there has been a determined effort by the administration to promote an imperial America—a "New Unilateralism"—and how, in many parts of America, there is now a "disconnect" between the government and citizens.

Now They Tell Us By Michael Massing Preface by Orville Schell Michael Massing describes the American press coverage of the war in Iraq as "the unseen war," an ironic reference given the number of reporters in Iraq and in Doha, Qatar, the location of the Coalition Media Center with its $250,000 stage set.

Glory and Terror By Steven Weinberg Preface by Anthony Lewis Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, writes that America today "has an unprecedented opportunity to begin to escape from the risk of nuclear annihilation." But, he warns, President Bush is not only letting this opportunity slip away, he is, in some respects, moving in the wrong direction.

Torture and Truth By Mark Danner Read together, these memos and reports should make us confront, as a democratic society, the urgent questions that Mark Danner poses in this book, and that remain unanswered: Does fighting a "new kind of war" on terror justify torture? Who will we hold responsible for deciding to pursue such a policy, and what will be the moral and political costs to the country?

America Goes Backward By Stanley Hoffmann "Wrong assumptions, immoderate and confused ends, served by a mixture of counterproductive, inadequate, mismanaged, and, at times, scandalous means": Stanley Hoffmann's verdict on the US invasion of Iraq carries an uneasy echo of his view of the US failure in Vietnam.

Welcome to Doomsday By Bill Moyers Preface by Bill McKibben Welcome to Doomsday is an investigation into the coupling of ideology and theology, in particular the intrusion of religion into political life, in America today.

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