"Bush was Set on War."

The New York Times caught up with the British press and the blogosphere today by reporting definitively on a British memo that details a meeting between Blair and Bush on the eve of the war, with Bush apparently riffing ways to finesse the absence of a casus belli. My favorite passage:

The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.

Those proposals were first reported last month in the British press, but the memo does not make clear whether they reflected Mr. Bush's extemporaneous suggestions, or were elements of the government's plan.

And this five days before Colin Powell was sent in to the Security Council to deliver his laughable dossier, his slam-dunk case. The Times continues to dismiss this as simply filling in details on "what was known at the time" about the pres-o-dent's sent-o-ments. But let's be clear. It's proof that he was lying, that Powell was lying, and that Blair et al. knew they were lying, and many more people must have known as well.

The thing to be explained now is why no authority in the States, or in Britain for that matter, is putting these men (and women--let's not forget Condi) in jail. And why the authoritative press treats those who call for such treatment as nutcases.