Amidst all this talk of our local reservists in the U.S. Army’s 411th Engineer Battalion (Combat Heavy) returning safely from Iraq, the website www.thememoryhole.org today showed pretty much once and for all that our war in Iraq began under false pretenses. It linked to a Times of London scoop based on a secret July 23, 2002 British secret service memo on a then-recent Iraqi invasion planning meeting. Stating flat out that “Military action was now seen as inevitable”—remember, this was written months before our fearless leader George W. Bush went on TV and said “I hope the use of force [against Iraq] will not become necessary”—the memo repeated time and again that Bush wanted war. “It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action,” the memo’s author wrote. Then the author explained Bush’s problem with invading Iraq. “But the case was thin,” he wrote. “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.” The story’s gotten a lot of play in Britain, but over here, no one much beyond the websites Memory Hole and Salon has written about it. I guess this is old news to everyone but me.