Bush on the record. He lied about efforts to avoid Iraq invasion. War was the only goal.

Josh Marshall at his Talking Points Memo provides links to the report published in the Spanish newspaper "El Pais" of leaked transcripts between Bush and then Spanish Prime Minister Aznar just before the outbreak of the Iraq War.

Josh reports:

The gist seems to be that Bush was rather candid about the fact that the efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis were a sham and that the war was a done deal.

Remember, this is from a transcript of what Bush himself told Spanish PM Aznar four weeks before the invasion started.

The fact of this isn't a surprise to many of us, though the frank admission by Bush that his peace efforts were a sham have not been previously precisely documented as sourced to Bush himself.

This transcript adds greatly to and is stronger than what Richard Dearlove (then head of British foreign intelligence service MI6) said in the Downing Street Memo. This Spanish transcript is from four weeks before the Invasion of Iraq, while the downing Street Memo was reported in July 2003, well after the invasion of Iraq was over, and comes from the head of a foreign Intelligence organization rather than directly from the lips of Bush himself.

When Bush bloviates on how he will look better in 50 years when the historians have the chance to dig into what he did during his Presidency, he once again proves that he is a fool.

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Yes, the report is in Spanish, and no, I don't read Spanish all that well yet. Here is the link Josh presents:

• Link to "El Pais."

Babelfish only translates parts, so I need to dig out my dictionary and list of Spanish verbs.