Bush Transcript Proves He Intentionally Deceived US

I think this is the smoking gun. We had the Downing Street memos which indicated what this proves, but that was a "report" of a conversation had with the Bush Administration. It did not feature Bush's actual statements word for word. We now have a word for word transcript of statements made to Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, and Condoleeza Rice. He made these statements while he was telling the people of the US (and Congress) that all options were on the table with Iraq, and war would be a "last resort".

Saddam was willing to leave Iraq without war. Why, if regime change was the desired outcome, did we have to go to war with Iraq? Saddam could have walked away (could have been captured, imprisoned or assassinated despite assurances to the contrary). War was never necessary to oust him.

I suspect the truth is . . . the occupation of Iraq was always the objective.

And that is distrurbing. Becuase it indicates that this administration has gone to a great deal of trouble to "acquire" Iraq, and thus likely has no plans whatsoever to leave that nation, any more than it plans to remove all its troops from Germany or Japan.

Since this is SO CAL GRASSROOTS, I have every confidence you'll want to make up your own mind based on the evidence. Here's some documents to refer to.

Link to English story

Link to original transcript (in Spanish)