At least Britian cares about the integrity of their government...

Prime Minister Tony Blair can only dream he was the head of America instead of the UK. He must fantasize often about our obedient corporate media and its eagerness to never say anything really critical of Bush. No, Blair actually has to face the fact that he took Britian to war based on a sack of lies.

And new documents are making matters worse for him. The Sunday Times has reported that Blair and Bush held a very secret meeting in July, 2002 where they had ALREADY agreed to invade Iraq and remove Saddam. The invasion was already a done deal at that point. All that was left was throwing enough shit against the wall and hoping something, anything, would stick.

That's eight months before the attack, at a time when Bush and Blair were claiming there were no plans. Of course, it's not really a surprise that they'd lie about it. Both make Clinton look like a saint when it comes to fessing up to the truth.

Saddam was a bad guy, but what Bush and Blair did was equally despicable. Manufacturing a bunch of lies to start an unprovoked war for the sake of looting another country's resources--while letting the corporations profit freely by making the working class pay for it all--is not the standard of integrity and decency most Americans and Brits expect of their respective goverments.

As a disappointed American, I can at least draw some satisfaction that our parent country (Britiain) still has some semblance of accountability in its politics.

The last thing either country's people can afford to do is turn a blind eye to the gross abuse of power by Bush and Blair. Even if ousting Saddam is good in the long term, a message must be sent to politicians that they must act within the law not outside of it. In both cases, the heads of state broke their own laws and they must pay.

For if they are not held accountable for the lies, then that opens the door for future schemes. Casting aside the shackles of checks and balances within a government has always been the critical step to an autocratic takeover. At least the British have enough sense to understand this.