Downing Street Memo, Part II: Revenge of the British Civil Servants
The Washington Post reports today on another British memo, in preparation for the now infamous meeting minutes referred to as the Downing Street Memo, which called into question how well the US was planning for the post-victory liberation/occupation:

A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country. The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq. [...] The July 21 memo was produced by Blair's staff in preparation for a meeting with his national security team two days later that has become controversial on both sides of the Atlantic since last month's disclosure of official notes summarizing the session. [...] Now, disclosure of the memo written in advance of that meeting -- and other British documents recently made public -- show that Blair's aides were not just concerned about Washington's justifications for invasion but also believed the Bush team lacked understanding of what could happen in the aftermath. In a section titled "Benefits/Risks," the July 21 memo states, "Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks." Saying that "we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective," the memo's authors point out, "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." The authors add, "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

This story is finally getting more traction. Case in point--this editorial from the St. Petersburg Times with the headline, The American people have been had:

Bush may not realize it, but Amnesty International may have done him a big favor. The controversy the human rights group ignited over the treatment of Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has deflected the attention of journalists and war critics from an even more disturbing story - how all the president's talk about going to war as a last resort was just a ruse. Seven months before the "shock and awe" bombing began in Baghdad, the Bush administration was bending intelligence to suit its purpose, which was to go to war come hell or high water. Who says so? The head of British foreign intelligence, that's who. It's all in the Downing Street memo, which was leaked to the Sunday Times of London just before last month's British elections. It created an uproar in Britain but has barely registered in the United States, mainly because the press was more interested in whether U.S. interrogators were desecrating the Koran at Guantanamo. [...] Some will ask: What's the point of bringing up the Downing Street memo now, two years after the invasion and at a time when terrorist suicide bombers are making life hell not only for U.S. troops but the Iraqi people? The point is this: President Bush didn't level with the American people before going to war. And he still hasn't.

The tide of the war and the mounting evidence of fraudulent evidence put forth by BushCo has even shaken the faith to Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC), the man who renamed French fries as "freedom fries" in the Capitol's cafeteria:

"I just feel that the reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there." He said his change of heart about the war came after he attended the funeral of a US sergeant killed in Nasiriya, Iraq, in April 2003. Mr Jones said he was moved by the soldier's widow who read out her husband's last letter. "And that really has been on my mind and my heart ever since," he said. Mr Jones, who represents North Carolina, has written condolences letters to the families of more than 1,300 servicemen killed in Iraq, and photographs of those killed in action are posted outside his congressional office.