Eddie Konczal, Published in The Cranbury Press on 08/05/2005

On July 23, I attended a public reading of the Downing Street minutes in Highland Park. The event commemorated the third anniversary of a cabinet meeting held by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Minutes from this meeting, leaked recently to the press, indicate that the Bush administration was committed to pursuing war with Iraq nearly eight months before the war actually began.

The Downing Street Minutes, named for Prime Minister Blair's offices in London, claim that President Bush was tired of diplomacy and had already decided to take military action. The "smoking gun" in the memo is this fateful paragraph:

"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."

The Downing Street minutes demonstrate that President Bush pursued war as a preferred course of action, rather than as a last resort — contrary to what President Bush told the nation. The memos also illustrate the administration's disregard for developing an exit strategy. This undisciplined approach led to the loss of more than 1,700 American troops — a vast majority of them since May 2003, when President Bush declared the end of major combat.

I want to thank the organizers of the Highland Park event for raising public awareness of the Downing Street minutes. Anyone who missed this remarkable event can learn more by visiting afterdowningstreet.org or downingstreetmemo.com.