Leaked Memo that Must Toast Bush

John Conyers, bless his patriot heart, is "all over" the London Times memo that is shaping up to be a hot potato that the Bush White House will have a hard time passing; nay, he MUST have a hard time blowing it off. This is big, the "big one."

He's blogging on it at http://www.conyersblog.us/

As he wrote yesterday: "More on this tomorrow, but it looks like we're making headway on an issue that goes to the very integrity of our government. Thanks for your thoughts and help on this."


And the Seattle Times has printed a story on it today:

Memo disputes Bush Iraq claims

By Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON — A highly classified British memo, leaked during Britain's just-concluded election campaign, claims President Bush decided by summer 2002 to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.

The memo, in which British foreign-policy aide Matthew Rycroft summarized a July 23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair with top security advisers, reports on a U.S. visit by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.

The visit took place while the Bush administration was declaring to Americans that no decision had been made to go to war. While the memo makes observations about U.S. intentions toward Iraq, the document does not specify which Bush administration officials met with Dearlove.

The MI-6 chief's account of his U.S. visit was paraphrased by the memo: "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. ... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

Read the whole article here

It's up to US to spread the wildfire....