According to some in other echoes, it is US "liberals" who forced
Bush to invade Iraq. Bush is merely a puppet - "liberals" pull the
strings, & the puppet dances, & someone does the ventriloquisting. 

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Secret British government memos show Blair hand wringing over Bush's
Iraq war plans

By THOMAS WAGNER
Associated Press Writer

06/18/05 LONDON (AP) When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign
policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11,
the then-U.S. national security adviser didn't want to discuss Osama
bin Laden or al-Qaida. She wanted to talk about ``regime change'' in
Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led invasion more than a year
later.

President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried
the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked
secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate
about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein.

In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter
Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and
compelling military reason for war.

``U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so
far frankly unconvincing,'' Ricketts says in the memo. ``For Iraq,
`regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between
Bush and Saddam.''

The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam's
alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was
determined to go to war as America's top ally, even though his
government thought a pre-emptive attack may be illegal under
international law.

``The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam
Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September,''
said a typed copy of a March 22, 2002 memo obtained Thursday by The
Associated Press and written to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

``But even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programs will not show much
advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW (chemical or
biological weapons) fronts: the programs are extremely worrying but
have not, as far as we know, been stepped up.''

Details from Rice's dinner conversation also are included in one of
the secret memos from 2002, which reveal British concerns about both
the invasion and poor postwar planning by the Bush administration,
which critics say has allowed the Iraqi insurgency to rage.

The eight memos all labeled ``secret'' or ``confidential'' were first
obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them
in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained
the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and
destroying the originals.

The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have
circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies
said their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the secret nature of the material.

(snip / snip)

Full article at Information Clearinghouse ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9192.htm

Cheers, Steve..

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