We already know about all the fabrications and scare tactics that he, Cheney and Rumsfeld were positing long before the March 2003 invasion.

The memo, by the way, is minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top security officials. The memo includes a reference to the head of British intelligence saying that Bush had already decided on war, "but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The president insists he didn’t decide to invade until Secretary of State Colin Powell’s "evidence" of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was presented to the United Nations in February 2003.

Yeah, right.

At a forum in Washington last week organized by Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, several people in and out of government stated their outrage over the memo amid feelings of vindication for their doubts about Bush’s truthfulness.

Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq last year, said at the forum that the memo "confirms what I already suspected: the leadership of this country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on prefabricated and cherry-picked intelligence."

Apparently a lot of Americans are changing their opinions about the war, whether because of the growing numbers of body bags and cripples, or the dirty picture the memo and other evidence paints of the Bush administration.

A recent poll shows that the number of Americans who want troops home from Iraq is increasing, with 63 percent of adults favoring bringing troops back in the next year. That’s up from 47 percent just 18 months ago.

Only a third said they want to keep troops in Iraq until a stable government is established, down from 50 percent 18 months ago.

In Congress, a bipartisan group of House members last week called on the White House to announce by the end of the year a plan for withdrawing American forces from Iraq. And more than 40 lawmakers formed an "Out of Iraq" Congressional caucus.

Obviously, more and more people are getting fed up with the war and feel violated because it’s become clearer that they were deceived by their president.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting on Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said "public support in my state is turning. People are beginning to question. And I don’t think it’s a blip on the radar screen. We have a chronic problem on our hands."

So, with the body count climbing along with the number of people opposed to the war, what can we do about it? How can Bush and his militants be stopped?

In my column of June 4, I closed by suggesting that the anti-war movement needed to re-awaken and take to the streets again to demonstrate its renewed opposition to the war.

A few days later I received an e-mail from a former resident living in Oregon who said he agreed with my diagnosis but suggested that going the way of the 1960s by protesting wouldn’t work.

He said, "Just as today the politicians don’t really care what we think, as long as they are in office. Now to get INTO office they do certainly care. We as the American people can do very little to fix things. Let’s face it, we can vote for the best person we feel can do the job in the White House, and for the country, and once he is in office he is not the same person we voted for.

"So, Cary, sit back and watch the story unfold. Or get out there with your protest flags and start the revolution. There really is nothing you can do about it except keep voting for the lesser of two evils and hope for the best out of whomever gets the most electoral votes."

I know it’s easy to feel such hopelessness. It seems impossible to bring any substantive change at the ballot box, so what are people to do? No, starting a revolution wouldn’t get very far. And with the way the tide is turning against the war, opponents may not even have to return to the streets.

Like Graham said, lawmakers are starting to hear the complaints from their constituents. And we need to do everything we can to make sure our congressmen and senators hear it, too, clearly and loudly.

It is not too late to prevent a lot of bloodshed in Iraq. We can save the lives of our troops and the lives of Iraqi civilians, who are being victimized more than anyone else in the civil war that resulted from our invasion.

Tell your legislators to help bring the troops home.

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Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.