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Well, guess what’s on the front page of the Washington Post today, my pets?

From Memos, Insights Into Ally's Doubts On Iraq War

As the headline suggests, the article focuses primarily on British issues, so don’t expect to read it and reward it with thunderous applause, but it does a decent job of explaining the Memos, and what the controversy in America is all about:

Critics of the Bush administration contend the documents -- including the now-famous Downing Street Memo of July 23, 2002 -- constitute proof that Bush made the decision to go to war at least eight months before it began, and that the subsequent diplomatic campaign at the United Nations was a charade, designed to convince the public that war was necessary, rather than an attempt to resolve the crisis peacefully. They contend the documents have not received the attention they deserve.

Supporters of the administration contend, by contrast, that the memos add little or nothing to what is already publicly known about the run-up to the war and even help show that the British officials genuinely believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They say that opponents of Bush and Blair are distorting the documents' meaning in order to attack both men politically.

It’s a start, anyway (nearly two full months after the starting pistol went off).

I’ll take it.