Juan Cole on "smoking guns"

Juan Cole, professor of History at the University of Michigan uses the occasion of the British general election (which Blair won, though with a sharply reduced majority) to put together all the pieces of news and intelligence that implicate Blair in lying to the British people over the War in Iraq. He focuses on a secret British memo (which originally appeared in the Times Online site) reflecting a clear consensus not only that Bush tampered with Iraq intelligence, but that Blair was complicit in Bush's scheme. Of course, none of this is new - although the latest memo does seem to be the clearest "smoking gun" for implicating Blair - but Cole's piece does bring Blair's and Bush's duplicity into sharp relief.