Do You Believe Me Now?

OK, the shit is really hitting the fan now. I can't imagine how I'd feel reading this if a family member of mine died in this fiasco.

WASHINGTON - President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were officially on a diplomatic track regarding Iraq in January 2003, but a secret memo now reveals they were determined to go to war six weeks before invading.

"This issue will come to a head in a matter of weeks, not months," said Bush on Jan. 31, 2003.

Taking notes at the meeting that day in the Oval Office, Blair's National Security Adviser David Manning, now Great Britain's ambassador in Washington.

Five days later, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made the U.S. case to the United Nations.

But Manning wrote that the president had decided on war no matter what happened diplomatically, or whether inspectors found weapons of mass destruction.

"As the memo makes clear, the diplomatic strategy was fixed around the military planning," says Philippe Sands, a professor of international law and the author of the book “Lawless World.” "The decision had been taken."

According to the memo, Bush and Blair also predicted a quick victory and vastly underestimated the challenge of creating a new government.