Unheeded Warnings. How Vatican Diplomacy Failed to Prevent the Iraq War
commonwealmagazine.org
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| Mons. Pio Laghi . George Bush |
(Paul Moses) On Ash Wednesday 2003, a high-level envoy from the Vatican visited the White House to hand-deliver a letter from Pope John Paul II to President George W. Bush. The president set the letter aside and was soon engaged in a pointed and sometimes heated debate with the emissary, Cardinal Pio Laghi, over his administration’s plan to go to war with Iraq. The following month, I made the first of several attempts over the years to get a copy of that letter through the Freedom of Information Act. Last month, the archivist at the George W. Bush Presidential Library contacted me with the news that my “Mandatory Declassification Review” had been granted. (...)
