Surprise, surprise

Eight months before the invasion of Iraq, British PM Tony Blair and top members of his government met to review information from Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI-6, who had just returned from Washington. The so-called Downing Street Memo, secret until it was leaked during the recent UK election campaign, provides damning evidence that President Bush had already made up his mind to invade Iraq by the summer of 2002, in the absence of any evidence that Iraq was a threat to the US or even to its neighbours. Response in the US media to the revelation has been slow to build, but several score members of Congress have now called on Bush to explain the memo, whose accuracy has not been challenged.