"The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.
"The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair's inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was 'necessary to create the conditions' which would make it legal."
In the New York Times this morning, David E. Sanger finds the White House a possible verbal loophole: "A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made 'no political decisions' to invade Iraq, but that American military planning for the possibility was advanced."
Sanger also writes off the memo's central point. "While the latest memorandum appears to have been written by a British intelligence official after a visit to Washington, the central fact reported -- that the American military was in the midst of advanced planning for an invasion of Iraq -- was no secret. The New York Times published details of that plan two weeks before the memorandum was written."
But signs are that the blogging community, which kept plugging away at the DSM story even while the MSM was largely ignoring it, will also keep plugging away at this one.
Meanwhile, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dick Polman mulls the significance of the first memo: "Shortly after his November triumph, President Bush declared that voters had endorsed his prosecution of the war in Iraq. In his words, 'We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections.'
"But today, with U.S. casualties rising and military recruitment falling, it is clear that Bush's accountability moment has been extended. Even though he won't run for office again, voters continue to assess the signature decision of his presidency; in growing numbers, they are voicing dissatisfaction.
"And amid all this unease -- for the first time, a majority of Americans say that the war launched in March 2003 has not made this nation safer -- a growing grassroots movement is spotlighting a once-secret British government memorandum, written in the summer of 2002, that depicts Bush as having already decided to wage war, even though the case against Saddam Hussein was 'thin.'."
Flashback
The Left Coaster blog, by the way, reminds me of this March 2003 Time magazine story by Michael Elliott and James Carney: ".'[Expletive] Saddam. we're taking him out.' Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
"It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase.
"The Senators laughed uncomfortably; Rice flashed a knowing smile. The President left the room. A year later, Bush's outburst has been translated into action, as cruise missiles and smart bombs slam into Baghdad."
Poll Watch
Susan Page writes in USA Today: "Nearly six in 10 Americans say the United States should withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraq, a new Gallup Poll finds, the most downbeat view of the war since it began in 2003. .....
