November 26, 2009
Tony Blair and George Bush 'may have agreed Iraq regime change'
Tony Blair and George Bush may have agreed the need for regime change in Iraq in private discussions at the US president's ranch, the Iraq Inquiry heard today.
Sir Christopher Meyer, who was Britain's ambassador to the US between 1997 and 2003, said the April 2002 meeting in Crawford, Texas, appeared to be a major turning point.
He said in evidence: "I took no part in any of the discussions and there was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there.
"I know what the Cabinet Office says were the results of the meeting but to this day I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch."
He said the change in stance was evidenced in a speech given by the Prime Minister the following day.
"To the best of my knowledge, I might be wrong, this was the first time that Tony Blair had said in public 'regime change'," Sir Christopher said.
"What he was trying to do was to draw the lessons of 9/11 and apply them to the situation in Iraq. which led - I think not inadvertently but deliberately - to a conflation of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
"When I heard that speech, I thought that this represents a tightening of the UK/US alliance and a degree of convergence on the danger Saddam Hussein presented."
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/801901-blair-and-bush-agreed-to-iraq-regime-change-at-ranch
Iraq and 9/11 linked after talks
Published on 27 Nov 2009
Tony Blair deliberately conflated the threats from Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks, the official inquiry into the Iraq War has heard.
Foreign Office officials have repeatedly told the inquiry, sitting in central London, that British intelligence had no evidence of any connection between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda.
However, giving evidence on day three of the inquiry, the former British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, said Mr Blair had directly linked the two following a private meeting with President George Bush at his Texas ranch.
The next day the then Prime Minister had spoken publicly for first time about the case for “regime change” in Iraq.
Sir Christopher said it appeared that agreement on a new approach towards Iraq had been “signed in blood” by Mr Blair and Mr Bush.
Sir Christopher said that initially, when the Bush administration came to power in January 2001, there had been little talk in Washington of regime change in Iraq, even though it had been official US policy dating back to 1998.
He said it was like “a grumbling appendix”, but that after the 9/11 attacks “everything changed”.
By the time Mr Blair met Mr Bush seven months later, in April 2002, at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Sir Christopher said there would have been no point in “banging on” about regime change only to say Britain would not support it.
He said that it was still unclear exactly what the two leaders discussed in private, but that afterwards there was an apparent shift in the British position.
“There was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there,” he said. “To this day I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch.”
The following day, however, Mr Blair made a speech in which he spoke publicly for the first time about regime change in Baghdad.
“What he was trying to do was to draw the lessons of 9/11 and apply them to the situation in Iraq, which led – I think not inadvertently but deliberately – to a conflation of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein,” he said.
Sir Christopher said Mr Blair had always been a “true believer about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein” having made a speech on the subject as far back as 1998.
However, the Foreign Office had ruled there was no legal basis for seeking to oust the Iraqi dictator and, prior to the Crawford meeting, Mr Blair had generally been “discreet” about his views.
Unlike the British, however, key US figures like the influential deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz were convinced there was a “strong connection” between Saddam and al Qaeda.
Sir Christopher said the British priority was to get the administration to agree to seek a new United Nations Security Council resolution to provide the basis for military action.
However, he had a hard time persuading hardline
“neo cons” like Mr Wolfowitz, who were “viscerally hostile” to the UN, that this was not a “limp-wristed, pitiful, European lack of will, pathetic type thing”.
Although they had won support of a new Security Council resolution in November 2002, the strategy was ultimately a failure because Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors had not been given enough time to complete their work.
Sir Christopher said the “real problem” was that the US military was planning for an invasion in March 2003, which left the British and Americans “scrambling” to find proof that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
Sir Christopher suggested that if the weapons inspectors had been given more time, war could have been avoided.
“The key problem was to let the military strategy wag the political and diplomatic strategy. It should have been the other way round,” he said.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/iraq-and-9-11-linked-after-talks-1.986851
