Ok, don't fear my loyal readers. I am back. After the longest absence from my blog since I started, I am now back to bestow much political stew upon you all. Ewwww!! That sounds gross, bestow political stew upon you? Hope it's not chunky.

First off, the "Downing Street Memo".

'Downing Street memo' gets fresh attention

In case you hadn't heard about it, this memo is a memo on a meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and most heads of British intelligence that took place on July 23, 2002. Several months before the Iraq war began. At a time when shrub claimed that he still hadn't decided to go to war, before he had gone to the UN.

So apparently during this meeting,

"...the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service that in 2002, the Bush administration was selectively choosing evidence that supported its case for going to war and ignoring anything to the contrary. The war began in March 2003.

'Intelligence and facts were being fixed' by the Bush administration 'around' a policy that saw military action 'as inevitable,' the newspaper quoted from the memo."

Now my progressive peers in the blogging world and elsewhere have pointed to this as a "smoking gun" that shrub willingly manipulated intelligence to support going to war, and had already made up his mind when he told us that he was still trying to find a peaceful solution.

I, however, have not wrote about this until now, because I don't see this as a "smoking gun". To me the only thing that this memo itself can prove, without any further testimony from someone else, is that this Intelligence chief, Richard Dearlove, THOUGHT that this is what shrub was doing.

Let's get this straight, I am not saying that he didn't manipulate intelligence, because I believe he did. But we need actual proof of this, and I'm sorry but this memo is not that proof. This memo can only prove that this intelligence chief made this statement, it can't prove what his reason for saying that was, besides his opinion.

BUT I am mentioning it now, because a reporter asked Blair and shurb at their press conference about it yesterday. And strangely now Blair seems to deny that this was said, at least that is what I read somewhere. I can't find that source now, so anyways take it for what its worth. Things smell fishy, and he got away with it, that is the worst thing.