KAGAN: Topping our news about Iraq. For the first time, a bipartisan resolution is urging a timetable to bring home U.S. troops. Two Republicans and two Democrats from the House are talking about a resolution at a news conference this hour. There's a live picture for you. The four lawmakers want President Bush to begin the withdrawal by October 1, 2006. The Bush administration says a timetable cannot be considered until Iraqi forces are strong enough to protect their country.
North Carolina Republican Walter Jones is one of the resolution sponsors. Jones voted for the Iraq war, and pushed the phrase "freedom fries" in Capitol Hill cafeterias, but he says now the U.S. has done what it can in Iraq. Jones also says the reason given for the invasion, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, has been proven false.
Are insurgents becoming nor sophisticated in their attacks? the bombing in Ramadi may strengthen that question. Five U.S. marines were killed when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle on Wednesday. A U.S. sailor was killed in a separate fight. Five Marines were killed in the same area last week. U.S. officers say some rebels had been using shaped charges. Such explosives focused blasts into a small area, and that allows even heavy armor to be penetrated.
Prewar intelligence on Iraq and the decision to go to war is the focus of a session on Capitol Hill this afternoon. That forum in the wake of the leaked Downing Street Memo.
CNN's Bill Schneider explains what is in this 3-year-old memo, and why people care about it now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): Six weeks ago, the "London Sunday Times" published leaked minutes of a July, 2002 meeting in the Downing Street offices of British prime minister Tony Blair eight months before the war in Iraq.
According to the notes, a high-ranking British intelligence official who had just returned from Washington reported "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
The implication? The Bush administration had already decided to go to war before asking for a vote of Congress, before going to the United Nations.
At their June 7 press conference, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair addressed the issues raised by the memo.
TONY BLAIR, PRIME MINISTER OF BRITAIN: But the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: 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.
SCHNEIDER: End of debate? Not if Democratic Congressman John Conyers can help it. He's holding a forum Thursday to look into the allegations. What does Conyers hope to prove?
REP. JOHN CONYERS, (D) MICHIGAN: It may turn out that we got into a secret war that had already been planned and now that we're in it, we can't get out of it.
SCHNEIDER: There were a lot of reports during the summer of 2002 that the Bush administration was I be tent on going to war. What's so sensational about the allegations of the British documents?
CONYERS: Ironically, there are those now writing that we knew he was going to go to war all the time. But if we -- those who claimed that they knew that, he wasn't telling the Congress that. And it's in this crucible that we get the question of deception. Did he deceive us into a war? Were we tricked in a war?
SCHNEIDER: The difference is, the mood of the country. In June, 2002, 61 percent of Americans favored sending U.S. troops to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Now only 42 percent say it was worth going to war in Iraq. That's why questions about how the U.S. got into the war are being raised now. More than they were then.
Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0506/16/lt.01.html
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