Is 'Downing Street Memo' a smoking gun?

Bush critics say it shows he lied to Americans about Iraq, but others say memo offers nothing new.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and some media outlets, dismiss its importance, but the so-called 'Downing Street Memo' seems to be gathering increasing public attention.

Thursday senior Democrats held a public forum on Capitol Hill and called "for a full investigation into a memo that appears to accuse [Mr. Bush] of misleading Americans into backing the war with Iraq," as the CBC reports.

The memo [see it here] is based on a briefing given to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top security advisers in July 2002, eight months before the war. Labelled "top secret," the memo summarizes a report from Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, who had just met senior Bush officials in Washington.

The memo says: "Military action was now seen as inevitable." That "Terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]" would be used to justify the war. But, the memo says, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0617/dailyUpdate.html

Got chimp by the balls. Now let's hang 'em.