Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Bush told Blair we’re going to war, memo reveals

Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was “solidly” behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion’s legality and despite the absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the war published today.

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 – nearly two months before the invasion – reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.

“The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning“, the president told Mr Blair. The prime minister is said to have raised no objection. He is quoted as saying he was “solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam”.

Look at them. Look at them. So smug and full of secrecy, because they’re going to war and the Hell with anyone else, but no one else will know that the diplomacy and the appearance of getting the UN’s approval was a sham. And they’ll make sure the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Except that we pretty much did know, and we always knew, that there was something not quite right about going to war in Iraq. The intelligence was always pointing the policy that way, but the policy was always making damn sure that only the “right” intelligence was used. Thousands of people, military and civilian, have died, and God only knows how much money has been wasted on an incapably fallible Dope’s errand. Money that we could use to rebuild the Southeast. Manpower and equipment, ditto.

I really hope that the wheels come off the Right’s little red wagon, maybe by this fall (or the next big storm). And I hope that no more soldiers, sailors, Marines, Iraqis, or American citizens neck deep in dirty water die needlessly… because I think entropy, anarchy, and the rot are setting in, thank God, at last.