Christ on a crutch

First off, The London Times has published secret UK government minutes from a 2002 meeting on the coming war in Iraq:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. 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. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action....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. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

From the ever-excellent Secrecy News (Friday the 13th ed.), which goes on to say: "Coverage of the matter has been sparse in the U.S. The Los Angeles Times reported on it yesterday, more than a week after the story broke in the UK on May 1, and the Washington Post followed today." Second, Seymour Hersh talks about Iraq, My Lai and the President of the United States of America:

But I think what's more important than that is that this guy, this Bush, absolutely believes in what he's doing. He's not like a nervous Richard Nixon, worried about, you know, "They're coming after me," or Lyndon Johnson quitting over Vietnam with great uncertainty about whether he is doing the right thing. This guy is absolutely convinced....I have a friend who is a major player who went to Iraq recently. There's been a series, unreported, a series of missions in Iraq that have all been there to study the war -- where are we? -- and they've all come back pretty negatively. This guy came back and he saw the President months ago. And he said, "Mr. President, we're losing the war in Iraq." And there was a sort of a three-second beat and Bush said, "You mean we're not winning." And this guy said, "Hey, I told him what I had to say. If he wants to turn it the way he wants to, that's the way it goes." You know, so he hears what he hears.

Link by way of Ken MacLeod: " You know how this stuff ends? It ends with your cities in rubble, your capital occupied, and your leaders hanged."