The Conservative Brits help the Liberal Media?

OK enough doggy talk. Thisreport may very well be the best thing to come out of the British Election (at least from a US perspective). I have no real issues with Blair except he went along with Bushy on the war. Blair if he is taken for his word has supposedly strengthened most of the good Social programs England had. And hey, he is running against the Conservative party. Which gives Blair the automatic thumbs up, even though watching Commons Questions time on C-SPAN is what did it for me. However, he could have been lying this whole time but since I have my own President who keeps me stupidly busy factchecking every word he utters, I just don't have the time to give Blair's good debating skills and his supposed facts the same treatment.

Well it turns out Blair and Bushy discussed the war way back in July of 2002 (the war started in March 2003, for those keeping score). Here are the four paragraphs that would typically start a coup in the third world but somehow have zero effect on us pragmatic, "real democracies":

The minutes, published by The Sunday Times today, begins with the warning: “This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. The paper should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know.” It records a meeting in July 2002, attended by military and intelligence chiefs, at which Blair discussed military options having already committed himself to supporting President George Bush’s plans for ousting Saddam.

“If the political context were right, people would support regime change,” said Blair. He added that the key issues were “whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan space to work”.

The political strategy proved to be arguing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed such a threat that military action had to be taken. However, at the July meeting Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said the case for war was “thin” as “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran”.

Straw suggested they should “work up” an ultimatum about weapons inspectors that would “help with the legal justification”. Blair is recorded as saying that “it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors”.

A separate secret briefing for the meeting said Britain and America had to “create” conditions to justify a war.

Prediction: The American right wing talking heads, will say this is nothing but the nutty liberal media smearing a great ally of the American People.

Knock Knock... Blair is a LIBERAL, it is the CONSERVATIVES who leaked this little memo out to the press.

Stretch prediction: Some ignorant American talking head will equate the Sunday Times with the Daily Mirror who had that neato cover story after the election about Bush voters being dumb.

A claim which isn't necessarily substantively false after this article, 4 or 5 commision reports, Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack", PBS Frontline, Farenheit 9/11 and many other sources who basically come to the same fact-based conclusion that Bush lied to the world about Iraq and the reasons we invaded.

But I am one of those tin-foil hat Marxist, Leninist, Castro loving, conspiracy theorists who kills babies for fun and marries gay people for shits and giggles.