Karla Adam of the Washington Post's article appearing in the July 31 Seattle Times writing from London explained:

"Britain began an independent inquiry into its role in the Iraq War Thursday with the panel's chairman (John Chilcot) confirming that former Prime Minister Tony Blair will not `shy away from making criticism!'

"John Chilcot, chairman, says the panel will cover 2001 until today.  He also said `The Anglo-American relationship is one of the most central parts of this inquiry' and the panel hoped to have `discussions' with the Americans involved in the war.  And at the same time, he said, discussions and evidence sessions are not necessarily the same thing, and of course we have no power to compel witnesses here, let alone in foreign governments.'

"Blair's decision to join the 2003 U.S. led invasion was deeply unpopular in Britain and was seen as one of the key reasons he stepped down."

CNN is reporting on the White House effort to restore President Bush's sagging poll numbers, which are holding at levels only slightly above bird flu popularity. Their hit back plan aims...

to reverse President Bush's poor poll showings on the topics of Iraq and honesty and trustworthiness by repeatedly making the point that the pre-war intelligence was faulty, it was not manipulated and everyone was working off the same intelligence.

The good news is the plan does not require the spread of democracy or liberty to a Middle Eastern country.  But neither does the plan introduce honesty and trustworthiness into the White House. Instead, the country will come under extensive Republican kool-aid type memes to help us realize that we are all the victims of faulty national intelligence, the White House included.

Now is the time to pull out the latest in British imports, the Downing Street Memo.  The memo has yet to fail in pointing out where Bush facts and intelligence wrap around a policy.  The Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) 2004 report did find the pre-war intelligence faulty.  However, whether that intelligence was manipulated is more easily determined if the last allegation that everyone was working off the same intelligence is false.

The extreme right-wing, desperate to rehabilitate the image of its miserable failure of a president and repair the damage done to his popularity by his unpopular war on Iraq, has concocted a story with which to absolve him.

The latest bit of right-wing nuttery wending its way through the blogosphere is that Bush is not actually responsible for the illegal invasion of Iraq; it is the Arab League, which nixed an eleventh-hour deal that would have allowed Saddam Hussein to voluntarily enter exile, that is to blame. Ed Morrisey, of the Far Right "Captain's Quarters," cites a story from the Rupert Murdoch-owned, Australia-based "News.com" and then offers this bit of fluff:

Does the Arab League bear ultimate responsibility for the war, and did the US almost finesse Saddam out of Baghdad? We may never know for sure, but if this report is accurate, it would show that the Bush administration was willing to accept a solution short of war that removed Saddam and his sons from Iraq.