Bush and 'the memo'

If any other major metropolitan daily has taken an editorial stand like this, I would like to read it: "PRESIDENT BUSH apparently thinks he can dismiss the damning "Downing Street memo" with a few glib words. If he is right, it is a sad commentary on the state of American democracy and values. The memo, recounting the details of a July 23, 2002, meeting at British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official residence on 10 Downing St., strongly suggested that the message had been sent across the Atlantic that the Bush White House had made the decision to wage war on Iraq. The minutes of the meeting indicated that Blair and his top-level intelligence and foreign-policy aides were given clear signals that military action was "inevitable."

In the most disturbing passage of the minutes, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, reporting on his recent trip to Washington, told the group that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power."-from the editorial today in the San Francisco Chronicle.