Rozalyn Sherman, Published in Home News & Tribune - Central Jersey on 05/30/05

The recent memo published in the Sunday Times of London purporting that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair made a secret decision to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nearly a year before launching their attack should be of great concern to every U.S. citizen.

The document implies that Bush and Blair shaped intelligence to that aim and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy.

The document is a summary of a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Blair and his top national security team, discussing how to create a political and legal basis for war. The case for military action at the time was ""thin."

Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service discussed his recent visit to Washington in which he learned, ""There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable." At the same time Dearlove was meeting with the Bush administration in Washington, the administration's foreign policy advisers were insisting that ""there are no plans to attack Iraq on the president's desk."

If this shocking document proves to be true, (the authenticity of the document has not been disputed by Blair's Downing Street office) then this is one of the cruelest abuses of power I can recall in my lifetime.

It is incomprehensible to think that this tragic war that has claimed the lives of 1,600 American soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqi men, women and children was a staged event and all of the reason given for its inception were lies.

For the sake of our brave men and women in the military and the families that have sacrificed loved ones, as well as the dead Iraqi citizens, I truly hope this turns out not to be true.