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Blair and Bush 'Agreed' on Iraq Regime Change in Private 2002 Crawford Ranch Meeting By Nicola Boden
November 26, 2009 "The Daily Mail" -- Tony Blair and George W. Bush may have 'signed in blood' their agreement to oust Saddam Hussein in secret talks almost a year before the start of the war in Iraq, it was revealed today. Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to the U.S. at the time, recounted how the two leaders spent hours speaking in private at the President's ranch in Texas in April 2002. The very next day, the Prime Minister gave one of his most significant speeches about the Iraqi leader, declaring that he was too dangerous to be ignored and mentioning 'regime change' publicly for the very first time. Sir Christopher told the Iraq inquiry that the talks appeared to be a major turning point in Mr Blair's view on the threat posed by Saddam and British policy. Condoleeza Rice had told him within hours of the September 11 attacks in New York that the U.S. was already considering whether there was any link between the atrocity and the Iraqi Leader, the former top diplomat said. But he said Mr Blair was insistent at that time that there had to be a 'laser-like' focus on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan and Iraq should not come into the equation. It was not until the meeting at the Crawford Ranch in 2002 that there was a major shift and British and American policy appeared to come together, he said. By that point, Britain realised that it would be a 'complete waste of time' to try and talk America out of its stance and so instead moved to focus on securing UN approval. Sir Christopher's evidence, on the third day of the Iraq inquiry, in London gave a fascinating insight into how Britain became increasingly tied to the U.S. on Iraq. He also claimed that:
Of the Crawford summit in 2002, Sir Christopher recalled: 'I took no part in any of the discussions and there was a large chunk of that time when no advisor was there.' Once the leaders had talked about problems in the Middle East with aides, they were left alone until dinner on Saturday night, the former ambassador remembered. 'I am not entirely clear to this day... what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch. 'There are clues in the speech Tony Blair gave the next day... To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time Tony Blair had said in public "regime change". 'He was trying to draw the lessons from 9/11 and apply them to the situation in Iraq which led to.. a conflation of the threat of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein... Sir Christopher said that he recognised this was a 'tightening of the UK-U.S. alliance and the degree of convergence on the danger that Saddam Hussein presented' as soon as he heard the speech. 'What you had in that speech was a rather sophisticated argument which was pre-emption but which said Saddam is too dangerous, his record is too bad, the potential threat he presents cannot be ignored, I think "doing nothing is not an option" was the phrase,' he told the inquiry. Mr Blair had always been a 'true believer about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein but until that point had been generally 'discreet' about his views, he added.
It was formal U.S. policy to pursue regime chance in Iraq from 1998 under Bill Clinton but there was little enthusiasm from his successor until after 9/11, the inquiry heard.
Before that date, Iraq had been like a 'grumbling appendix' for President Bush whose administration appeared to be running out of steam, Sir Christopher said. The focus had been on stricter sanctions and attempts to bring about regime change without military action but 9/11 sparked a 'sea change' in American thinking. Within hours of the atrocity, the then National Security Advisor Miss Rice mentioned that the U.S. was already talking about a possible link to the Iraqi leader. 'On 9/11 itself, in the course of the day, I had a telephone conversation with Rice and said "anything we can do to help, who do you think did it?",' he recounted. 'She said there was no doubt it had been an Al Qaeda operation but at the end of the conversation [she said] we are just looking to see whether there could possibly be any connection with Saddam Hussein. 'That was the very first time I heard the name of the Iraqi leader mentioned in the context of 9/11.' Sir Christopher, who left the U.S. before war broke out in 2003, said that by the following weekend 'that little reference' had turned into a huge debate. At Camp David, when George W. Bush met with his principal advisors, 'there was a big ding-dong about Iraq', the former top diplomat said. 'It seemed that Paul Wolfowitz [deputy defence secretary], who was there with Rumsfeld, argued very strongly for retaliation that would include Iraq. 'It's not clear on the record what extent he was supported by Rumsfeld. Some said he was very strongly behind it, others said Rumsfeld was not.' Wolfowitz was convinced there was a 'strong connection' between Saddam and Al Qaeda, Sir Christopher said. He continued: 'The decision taken that weekend was that the prime concern was Al Qaeda. It was Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, whatever the policy would be, had to be set aside for the time being. 'That was I believe exactly what Tony Blair was told when he arrived two days later, on 20th September, for a meeting with the President. 'Blair was extremely concerned that the reaction against Al Qaeda and retalation against Al Qaeda would become diluted, dissipated, by looking at Iraq at the same time which didn't merit it. 'He had sent Bush a message setting out his views on what needed to be done and argued very strongly for a laser-like focus on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan. 'By the time he got to Washington on 20th September he found the door was already open. He didn't have to argue the case, the President had already made that decision.' However, in the coming weeks, the U.S. view hardened due to the growing horror at the 9/11 attacks and then the anthrax scare shortly afterwards. This had 'spooked' the Bush administration, Sir Christopher said. 'The last person who had ever used anthrax was Saddam Hussein.' By the time Mr Blair and the President met in April 2002, it was Britain's time to decide where it stood on the issue and whether it agreed with the U.S. or not. 'It was a complete waste of time in these circumstances, if we were to be able to work with the Americans, to go to them and bang on about regime change and say we can't support it.' The priority for Britain then became to pursue the 'UN route' and get the UN Security Council to back the return of weapons inspectors to the country. America had to be persuaded this was the right move, particularly Mr Wolfowitz who was 'viscerally' opposed to the organisation, the inquiry was told. Sir Christopher said: 'I had to put it in those cynical terms to persuade him that this was not a limp-wristed, pitiful, European lack of will, pathetic type thing of which Europeans are frequently accused by the Americans.' Although the UN did pass a resolution, the U.S. military timetable for an invasion in March 2003 was already in place before Hans Blix and his team returned to Iraq. They could not see that the inspection process would be over by March, which left both countries needing to find their own proof in support of invasion.
Sir Christopher said: 'It was impossible to see how Blix could bring the inspection process to a conclusion, for better or worse, by March.
'Because you cannot synchronise the programmes, you had to short-circuit the process by finding the notorious "smoking gun". 'We have got to try to prove that he (Saddam) is guilty and we - the British and Americans - have never recovered from that because, of course, there was no smoking gun.' He suggested the war could have been delayed or possibly avoided if the military planning had been done on a longer timetable, in the 'cool autumnal season of 2003' instead of in the spring. 'A lot of things might have been able to have been unwound,' he told the panel. 'The key problem was to let the military strategy wag the political and diplomatic strategy. It should have been the other way round.' British support was quickly 'taken for granted' and he had trouble persuading the U.S. they needed a UN resolution to proceed, he added. 'The way I put it was if we didn't make a serious effort to go down the UN route, the first instance of regime change will take place in London,' he said. He criticised Mr Blair for failing to secure any pay-offs in return for British support, in terms of the liberalisation of transatlantic airline services or the need for post-war planning in Iraq. The feeling in much of the Bush administration was that 'it would be all right on the night' if Saddam was toppled, he said. Sir Christopher admitted he had never envisaged Mr Blair not sending in British troops, in the way Harold Wilson refused to support the U.S. in Vietnam. But he suggested that if Margaret Thatcher had been in power, she would have kept a firmer grip on policy and made sure there was a proper plan for the aftermath. 'I think she would have insisted on a coherent diplomatic strategy and I think she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck would happen if and when we remove Saddam Hussein,' he said.
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