News From The UK

Woven into an article in the Times describing former Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts for a private inquiry into Britain's role in Bush's Iraq war is this enticing tidbit - one that only reinforces what we already knew:

This news comes amid new evidence to suggest that Mr Blair knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

A memo dated January 31, 2003, by Sir David Manning, then Mr Blair’s policy adviser, outlines how President Bush told Mr Blair he had decided on a start date for the war — almost two months before the invasion.

Paraphrasing the President’s comments at the meeting, Sir David noted: “The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled (sic) in for March 10. This was when the bombing would begin.”

A few paragraphs later:

In public at this time, Mr Blair was justifying plans for an invasion on the grounds that Iraq might have weapons of mass destruction.

Not unlike George W. Bush. The UK's got the beginnings of an public inquiry into the war. Why can't we?

Anyway, the Guardian has this:

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising (sic) military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours (sic) over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

Just look at Bush's logic: Faking a UN aircraft (and does the UN even have any U2 planes?? Maybe someone should ask Bono.) in order to entrap Saddam into firing at it, just to pin a UN violation on him for doing so. It boggles the mind.

All this reiterates what's already known: they knew they they didn't know Iraq had WMD and yet they invaded anyway.

How many died for these lies?