Secret memo shows Bush was bent on war

A confidential memo of a two-hour meeting between President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan. 31, 2003 makes clear that the White House was bent on attacking Iraq two months later, according to the Mar. 20 issue of the New York Times based on its review of the document. Bush made clear to Blair that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second United Nation resolution, "or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons," writes Don Van Natta, Jr., after examining the memo about the meeting written by Blair's top foreign policy adviser David Manning. "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," Manning wrote in the memo. "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for Mar. 10," Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president, according to Van Natta. Stamped "extremely sensitive," the five-page memorandum had not been made public. In early February, Channel 4 in London first broadcast several excerpts from the memo, but the Times is first to review the full five-page memo. The two leaders apparently predicted a quick war and "manageable" aftermath, Van Natta writes. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups," and Blair agreed. "The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq," the Times relates. "Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein." It also described the president as saying, "The US might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's WMD," referring to weapons of mass destruction. As for postwar planning, the two men briefly discussed plans for a post-Hussein Iraqi government. "The prime minister asked about aftermath planning," the memo says. "Condi Rice said that a great deal of work was now in hand." Two senior British officials confirmed the authenticity of the memo, but declined to talk further about it, Van Natta explains. The so-called Downing Street memo written in July 2002, showed that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush administration to fit its desire to go to war.