From WNYKRs in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke is out this week. I'm Bob Garfield.

The question has raged since before the invasion of Iraq.

Was the decision for war made by the White House immediately after 9-11,

with the square peg of intelligence data pounded into the round hole of arguments for war, or was the

administration telling the truth all along and giving peace a chance? Former White House terrorism

czar Richard Clark has written that the decision was already made to force the ousting of

Saddam, but until five weeks ago there was little hard evidence to back up his claim.

That was when a bombshell exploded in the Times of London.

A story there featured a memo of the minutes of a meeting that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had

with some of his top intelligence aides on July 23, 2002,

at the Prime Minister's official residence, number 10, Downing Street.

The memo purportedly said that Blair was told in 2002 that the intelligence was being, quote,

fixed around the Bush administration's case for war.

The war began in March 2003.

That story about the so-called Downing Street memo

ran in Britain May 1st, four days before the British election.

Since then, the U.S. media have largely been silent.

Then, on Tuesday at a White House press conference,

Reuters reporter Steve Holland confronted the president and Prime Minister Blair. Thank you, sir. On Iraq, the so-called

Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence in fact for being fixed around the policy

of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened?

...