Spanish Newspaper Scoops U.S. Press on Pre-War Plans Revelation

“The most popular newpaper in Spain, El Pais, has published what they purport to be a transcript of a meeting between President Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar that took place in Crawford, Texas on February 22, 2003. According to Editor and Publisher, who provide a very rough translation of the transcript, the meeting largely concerned the administration’s plans to invade Iraq. The big reveal: Bush’s admission that he was going to go forward with the invasion “if there was a United Nations Security Council resolution or not…We will be in Baghdad at the end of March.”

This would appear to be something of a major scoop for El Pais, but the story has yet to gain traction in the stateside press. Currently, the USA Today is running a brief item on the story in their “On Deadline” blog, and the Washington Post has a wire report from Reuters that leads with, “Saddam Hussein was prepared to take $1 billion and go into exile before the Iraq war, according to a transcript of talks between U.S. President George W. Bush and an ally, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday.”"

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