SCHNEIDER: Now, voters in both the United States and Britain are losing confidence in this Iraq policy. In May, both -- most Americans said it was not worth going to war in Iraq, and in April, by 2-1, the British said they did not support the war in Iraq. Now, one question that emerged in this press conference was concerning a memo. In the summer of 2002, a foreign ministry official in Britain wrote a memo to the Blair government reporting on what a British intelligence official concluded after he visited Washington.
The memo said, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
This was eight months before the war in Iraq. Bush and Blair today both denied that the U.S. was already determined to go to war or that the facts were being manipulated. Bush even hinted that the memo was leaked in the heat of the British political campaign for political reason.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: Somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go -- to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth.
My conversations with the prime minister was, how can we do this peacefully? What could we do? And in this meeting, you know, evidently that took place in London, happened before we even went to the United Nations or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- both of us didn't want to use our military.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHNEIDER: This raises a question. Was that memo from the summer of 2002 incorrect or fraudulent? What we're faced here with is two conflicting accounts -- Lou.
DOBBS: Bill Schneider. Thank you very much.
SCHNEIDER: Sure.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0506/07/ldt.01.html If you get a chance drop a line to Monsieur Dobbs and thank him for opening the discussion but as Schneider points out, it
does raise a question and we
are faced with two conflicting accounts
and that it's important to get to the bottom of it!
lou@cnn.com