In the Downing Street meeting - between Blair and his top national security advisers - Richard Dearlove, chief of the British intelligence agency MI6, described his trip to Washington in July 2002 to discuss Iraq with Bush's national security officials.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," Dearlove said.
The memo added, "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."
Rather than the reluctant warrior, as portrayed in Woodward's book, Bush appears to be hell-bent for war, according to the contemporaneous record which is now public.
War Provocation
Another leaked British document recounted an Oval Office meeting between Bush and Blair on Jan. 31, 2003 - a little more than a month after the "slam-dunk" meeting. Bush again was scheming to find excuses for invading Iraq, even as he was publicly telling the American people that he viewed war as a "last resort."
Bush expressed hope that he still might be able to provoke the Iraqis into some violent act that would serve as a pretext for invading, according to minutes written by Blair's top foreign policy aide David Manning. Bush suggested painting a U.S. plane in United Nations blue and flying it over Iraq with the goal of drawing Iraqi fire, the minutes said.
"The U.S. was thinking of flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," according to the minutes. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."
Regardless of whether any casus belli could be provoked, Bush already had "penciled in" March 10, 2003, as the start of the U.S. bombing of Iraq, according to the memo. "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," Manning wrote.
According to the British memo, Bush and Blair acknowledged that the U.N. inspectors then scouring Iraq had found no WMD and were unlikely to find any in the coming weeks, but that wouldn't get in the way of the U.S.-led invasion. [NYT, March 27, 2006]
Spin & Lies
Bush's tendency to lie and spin also continued in the months after the invasion. For instance, by summer 2003, Bush had begun revising the pre-war history to make his invasion seem more justified, by claiming that Hussein had rejected a U.N. demand that inspectors be allowed into Iraq.
Though the record was clear that the inspectors had returned to Iraq by November 2002 and only left in March 2003 because Bush had decided to invade, Bush began insisting that Hussein had barred the inspectors, thus provoking war.
"We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power," Bush said on July 14, 2003, less than four months after the invasion.
In the following months and years, Bush repeated this claim dozens of times in slightly varied forms. It became part of his litany for arguing that it was Hussein who "chose war."
Despite Bush's record of deception, Woodward still treated Bush in Plan of Attack as a credible figure who was concerned about the evidence and went to war only after an ironclad assurance from his intelligence chief.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," Dearlove said.
The memo added, "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."
Rather than the reluctant warrior, as portrayed in Woodward's book, Bush appears to be hell-bent for war, according to the contemporaneous record which is now public.
Another leaked British document recounted an Oval Office meeting between Bush and Blair on Jan. 31, 2003 - a little more than a month after the "slam-dunk" meeting. Bush again was scheming to find excuses for invading Iraq, even as he was publicly telling the American people that he viewed war as a "last resort."
Bush expressed hope that he still might be able to provoke the Iraqis into some violent act that would serve as a pretext for invading, according to minutes written by Blair's top foreign policy aide David Manning. Bush suggested painting a U.S. plane in United Nations blue and flying it over Iraq with the goal of drawing Iraqi fire, the minutes said.
"The U.S. was thinking of flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," according to the minutes. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."
Regardless of whether any casus belli could be provoked, Bush already had "penciled in" March 10, 2003, as the start of the U.S. bombing of Iraq, according to the memo. "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," Manning wrote.
According to the British memo, Bush and Blair acknowledged that the U.N. inspectors then scouring Iraq had found no WMD and were unlikely to find any in the coming weeks, but that wouldn't get in the way of the U.S.-led invasion. [NYT, March 27, 2006]
Spin & Lies
Bush's tendency to lie and spin also continued in the months after the invasion. For instance, by summer 2003, Bush had begun revising the pre-war history to make his invasion seem more justified, by claiming that Hussein had rejected a U.N. demand that inspectors be allowed into Iraq.
Though the record was clear that the inspectors had returned to Iraq by November 2002 and only left in March 2003 because Bush had decided to invade, Bush began insisting that Hussein had barred the inspectors, thus provoking war.
"We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power," Bush said on July 14, 2003, less than four months after the invasion.
In the following months and years, Bush repeated this claim dozens of times in slightly varied forms. It became part of his litany for arguing that it was Hussein who "chose war."
Despite Bush's record of deception, Woodward still treated Bush in Plan of Attack as a credible figure who was concerned about the evidence and went to war only after an ironclad assurance from his intelligence chief.
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