The memo's warning to British Prime Minister Tony Blair was stark: his upcoming visit to President Bush's Texas ranch would not be a matter of long barbecues and songs around the campfire.

Instead, the April 2002 visit would involve discussion about a possible war in Iraq. Any decisions taken by the Atlantic allies might prove fateful, warned the memo's writer, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Mr. Blair's own Labour Party - indeed, the world at large - still needed to be convinced why the threat from Saddam Hussein had suddenly become dire, why an invasion wouldn't contravene international law, and what kind of government might replace the Hussein regime.

"The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few. The risks are high, both for you and the government," said Mr. Straw.

Two years after a US-led force toppled Mr. Hussein, publication of a series of secret internal British documents known collectively as the "Downing Street memos" is shedding new light on the thinking process in Washington and London in the run-up to war.

To some analysts, these memos document how the White House was intent on war in Iraq only months after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, and manipulated intelligence to fit its preconceptions.

To others, the information in the memos is vague, and their general conclusions are matters that were widely reported at the time.

If nothing else, the memos do provide a rare glimpse into the process of policymaking at top levels, and provide the sort of quotes and conclusions that historians may cite for years to come.

The first internal paper to earn the tag "Downing Street Memo" was published in the Sunday Times of London last month.

This memo summarized a July 23, 2002, meeting of Blair and top advisers. Its most widely reported passages relay the impressions garnered by a senior British intelligence official, Richard Dearlove, on a visit to Washington.

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable," according to Mr. Dearlove, named in the memo only as "C."

"But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route ... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

Critics say this is a smoking gun, proving that the administration was simply pretending that war might be forestalled during the months prior to the actual invasion, and that it knowingly corrupted intelligence reports to back a policy that was foreordained.

Others have a different reading of this passage. The memo does not say specifically that Mr. Bush, or indeed any US official, saw war as inevitable. And at the time, the media was rife with commentary that war was most likely coming. If seen in that general sense, the conclusion was unsurprising.

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