Since it showed up on claywestvirginia.com, I wanted to address the “Downing Street Memo.” Near as I can tell, the memo says that Bush was fairly certain, in July of 2002, that military action against Iraq was now inevitable. It also states that intelligence and facts were being “fixed around the policy.”

Honestly, I can’t see what the big deal is. Intelligence and facts being “fixed around the policy” is hardly the same thing as “intelligence and facts were generated out of thin air,” and collecting only the intelligence and facts that support his case is exactly what every single politician (and, in fact, every single individual) since the dawn of time has done.

As for the fact that Bush was certain that military action was “inevitable” in 2002, but later claimed that he hadn’t made up his mind to go into Iraq until 2003, I don’t see a contradiction there. It’s inevitable that I’m going to have to move from the place I’m living now, but I haven’t made up my mind to do it. That seems like the same thing to me.

I think the Downing Street memo fuss is simply a case of a mountain being made out of a molehill. The fact that this molehill is the one being focused on so strongly by Democrats really just tells me that they don’t have anything of substance to attack Bush on. After all, his worst stances are the ones that don’t put him in conflict with them.

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For more on the Downing Street Memos, see Captain’s Quarters (Emphasis Mine):

The media and the Leftists have had a field day with the Downing Street memos that they claim imply that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence on WMD in order to justify the attack on Iraq. Despite the fact that none of the memos actually say that, none of them quote any officials or any documents, and that the text of the memos show that the British government worried about the deployment of WMD by Saddam against Coalition troops, Kuwait and/or Israel, the meme continues to survive.