Among the other treats laid on for Blair at Crawford was an invitation to sit in on a CIA briefing and a drive in Bush’s pick-up around the 1,600-acre ranch. The two men were alone for several hours. ‘It sent Jonathan [Powell] and David [Manning] mad’ because they could not be sure what Blair was signing up to in the absence of any advisers or officials. That was made worse by his reluctance to properly debrief them afterwards. ‘He’d drive the foreign policy people nuts because he wouldn’t give them a readout.’82 When asked by Manning and Powell what he had said to Bush, Blair would shrug: ‘You know, I can’t really remember.’83 It was ‘partly because he wanted to keep it tight and partly because he just couldn’t be bothered’.84
From what they did manage to glean was composed a Cabinet Office summary of what was supposed to have been agreed in Texas: ‘When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, provided that certain conditions were met: efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel–Palestine crisis was quiescent, and the options for action to eliminate Iraq’s WMD through the UN weapons inspectors had been exhausted.’85
Some of the most senior officials at Crawford believe that the note makes Blair sound stronger than he actually was. ‘I doubt the conditions were that forcefully expressed,’ says David Manning. ‘I doubt he even mentioned the UN at Crawford. I don’t remember the UN coming up at Crawford. Even if the UN did come up, I doubt there was that much discussion. I don’t think Blair was a huge enthusiast for the UN at this stage.’86
Sir Christopher Meyer agrees: ‘The conditions were supposed to be laid out at Crawford by Tony Blair, but I don’t think they ever were.’87 The caveats were not all that substantial anyway. The Cabinet Office minute does not record him demanding that there should be adequate post-war planning in Iraq, nor that Britain should have influence in shaping it. It is not even mentioned, though it was already a big concern to the British. The conditions that Blair attached to his support for a war were essentially points about presentation. Blair did not demand full engagement by the Americans in the Middle East peace process as a condition of his support, merely that there was ‘quiescence’ in the conflict. Violence was at that point escalating after the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, ordered tanks into the West Bank in response to suicide bombings by Palestinians. Blair’s top condition was that the Americans helped to mould public and international opinion in support of military action, a concern always much greater for him than it ever was for Bush.
Blair’s weak qualifications on British support did not make an impact on the Americans, making it even more credible that he never really laid them down. ‘I don’t remember any quote conditions that were outlined at that meeting,’ says Andrew Card, Bush’s Chief of Staff.88 Neither did Colin Powell: ‘It was always a given that Blair would back us militarily, should it come to war in Iraq, so far as I was concerned. Right from the start. He didn’t attach any conditions to that support. Or none that I recall anyway.’89
Richard Armitage, Powell’s deputy at the State Department, later explained to the British ambassador the problem with ‘your so-called conditions’. ‘We’ve taken your support and buried your conditions.’90
At their joint news conference at the end of the Crawford Summit, President and Prime Minister stood together in a flag-decked school gymnasium. While Blair looked tired and uncomfortable, Bush was joshing, in control and more explicit than ever that he was dedicated to toppling Saddam Hussein. ‘History has called us into action,’ he declared, even making a joke of his lack of finesse. ‘Maybe I should be a little less direct and a little more nuanced and say we support regime change.’91 The media noted that Blair looked awkward at this point. Yet he was really no less explicit himself the next day when he visited the Texas A and M university to deliver a speech at George Bush senior’s Presidential Library. This was a highly significant speech, but it was ‘never properly reported at the time’.92 A logistical foul-up by Number 10 meant that it was missed by most of the media travelling with Blair. This speech both endorsed the doctrine of pre-emptive action and effectively announced that Blair was backing regime change. He even paid tribute to himself as a regime-changer.
‘I have been involved as British Prime Minister in three conflicts involving regime change. Milosevic. The Taliban. And Sierra Leone.’ Milosevic had, in fact, fallen some time after the conclusion of the Kosovo conflict, though that defeat certainly weakened the Serbian dictator.
‘Britain is immensely proud of the part our forces have played and with the results, but I can honestly say the people most pleased have been the people living under the regimes in question. Never forget: they are the true victims.
‘We must be prepared to act where terrorism or weapons of mass destruction threaten us,’ he contended. ‘If necessary, the action should be military and again, if necessary and justified, it should involve regime change.’
He had shown the speech to Bush before he delivered it and the American was especially delighted with this paragraph: ‘If the world makes the right choices now, at this time of destiny, we will get there. And Britain will be at America’s side in doing it.’93
On other occasions, when he felt it necessary to make tactical retreats so that war did not look inevitable, Blair would stick to his more opaque lines that ‘all the options are open’ and ‘no decisions have been made.’ The truth was that he had sworn his oath of allegiance to Bush.
There were British officers seconded to the CENTCOM American military headquarters based at Tampa in Florida. In the early part of the year, the British were not allowed into the room where invasion plans were being drawn up because Admiral Boyce and other senior officers wanted to concentrate on Afghanistan. The American generals were told by their British counterparts: ‘We were not up for it.’ Shortly after Blair’s commitment at Crawford, the British were admitted to ‘the inner cell’ at CENTCOM.94 Mike Jackson, the head of the army, began to ‘do a lot of planning, looking at what sort of force it might be in size, in shape, what will be the logistics … thinking about how we would generate the force’ in the Easter of 2002. He says: ‘Our assumption throughout was that if America decided to commit military forces to depose Saddam Hussein it was almost inevitable that British forces would be involved.’95
The Cabinet did not see any of this, but they could smell what was in the air. When Blair returned from Crawford, there was another outburst of apprehension around the table. Patricia Hewitt spoke up for the need to get UN support if it was not to be seen as ‘unilateralist action’. Blair gave them another passionate declaration of his credo: ‘I do believe in this country’s relations with the US.’ Yes, the UN was important but ‘we should not tie ourselves down to doing nothing unless the UN authorised it.’ When the question of whether a war would be legal was raised, Blair dismissed that as a problem that could be parked until much later. ‘The time to debate the legal base for our action should be when we take that action.’96
In the weeks following the Crawford Summit, there was no evidence that Blair had reshaped Bush’s approach to the world. The President heaped opprobrium on Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians but refused to apply any meaningful pressure on Ariel Sharon. Neither Blair nor Colin Powell could persuade Bush to lean on the Israelis to halt their military operations on the West Bank. Far from developing the UN route, it was the aggressive unilateralists in the administration who were growing more ascendant. Bush’s speech at the US military academy at West Point in June suggested that he was now wholly in their camp.
Richard Haas, a senior State Department official, was in no doubt that by the summer of 2002 ‘the fuse had been lit, the United States, with Britain in tow, had set forth a set of demands which made war, if not inevitable, highly likely.’97
Blair’s unswerving, uncritical dedication to the White House was alarming even some Americans. His own pollster, Stan Greenbe
rg, was ‘puzzled’ by ‘the very, very close relationship’ between Blair and Bush.98 Bill Clinton was getting worried. Though Clinton once advised Blair to stick close to Bush, he now feared Blair was taking that advice to extreme lengths. Clinton had a chance to voice his concern when he came over to Britain in early June for a ‘progressive governance’ conference held at a hotel in Buckinghamshire. At one closed session, the former President began to speak very negatively about the course being pursued by his successor in the White House. Blair shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He tried to catch Clinton’s eye. When he did, the two men left the room for ten minutes. On their return, Clinton said no more about Bush in front of the others. Alone with the Prime Minister, he could be frank. Clinton was staying at Chequers. He used the opportunity to warn Blair: ‘You’re being used by Bush.’ Blair told his old friend not to worry: ‘I can handle it. I can handle Bush.’99
Some of the Prime Minister’s most senior advisers and diplomats were not convinced. They increasingly feared that Blair had given away too much. From the Washington embassy, Christopher Meyer began to pepper Number 10 with calls and notes cautioning that the Americans thought they had Britain in their pocket. In the first week of July, Meyer wrote to Manning with the warning: ‘We risk being taken for granted in Washington.’ The White House now had ‘an almost automatic assumption’ that Britain was content to be sucked along ‘in the American slipstream’. Meyer urged that Blair have a ‘plain-speaking conversation’ with Bush to nail down Britain’s conditions.100
Towards the end of July, Blair did write a letter to Bush ‘really making the case for going the international route’ to deal with Saddam. Diplomats and officials who often despaired of Blair’s weak negotiating with Bush when they were face to face thought he was better when he put his concerns in writing. ‘Blair’s crisp little notes were good pieces of work. Well written. Short sentences. He tended to be much more robust with Bush in his notes than he was in person.’101
Yet again, though, Blair had emphasised his ‘yes’ at the expense of the ‘buts’. The July note began: ‘You know George, whatever you decide to do, I’m with you.’
When Meyer learnt of it, he rang Manning in horror. ‘It’s a brilliant note except for this bloody opening sentence: “Whatever you do, I’m with you”,’ the ambassador expostulated. ‘Why in God’s name has he said that again? He’s handed Bush carte blanche.’
Manning sighed down the phone: ‘We tried to stop him. We told him so, but he wouldn’t listen. That’s what he thinks.’102
The key British players gathered for a highly secret conclave at Number 10 on 23 July. John Scarlett summarised the latest intelligence assessment about Saddam. The Iraqi dictator was ‘worried and expected an attack’, but his regime was ‘tough and based on extreme fear’. In Scarlett’s assessment ‘the only way to overthrow it [the regime] was likely to be by massive military action.’103
That was precisely what the Americans were intent on, according to a Cabinet Office briefing paper prepared for this meeting. That document was suffused with a fatalism that war was coming. It reported that ‘US military planning unambiguously takes as its objective the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime’ and that ‘US … planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace.’104
Admiral Boyce shared the intelligence he was getting from the British officers at CENTCOM. Boyce told the meeting that the Americans were ‘coming on strong’ for an invasion.
Geoff Hoon said that American forces already in the region were engaging in ‘spikes of activity’ to put pressure on Saddam. Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, gave a startling report on what he had learnt from a recent visit to Washington. ‘Military action is now seen as inevitable,’ said ‘C’. ‘Bush wanted to remove Saddam’, which would be ‘justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD’, even though no-one had produced any evidence of a link between Saddam and 9/11. The intelligence and facts were being ‘fixed’ around the policy, the head of MI6 was minuted to have said after talking to his counterparts in the CIA. As for the concerns Blair presented to Bush at the Crawford Summit, and in phone conversations and memos since, Dearlove reported that there was ‘no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record’.
‘C’ added ominously: ‘There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.’
Jack Straw agreed that it seemed ‘clear that Bush had made up his mind’ to go to war. ‘But the case is thin,’ warned the Foreign Secretary. ‘Saddam is not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability is less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. The desire for regime change is not a legal base for military action.’ The Foreign Secretary was ‘discreetly’ working up the idea of getting the United Nations to present an ultimatum to Saddam, but the White House was highly resistant.
This made it devastatingly obvious that Blair had sold himself too cheap at the Crawford Summit. For fear that he would alienate Bush by being too robust with the President, Blair underplayed his hand. He had sworn up to war without getting anything bankable in return and in the process undercut the saner voices around Bush.
The Prime Minister told that July meeting at Number 10 that the ‘two key issues’ were whether the Americans’ ‘military plan worked’ and whether they could put together ‘the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work’. Even so, the secret official note of this meeting, composed by Manning’s deputy, Matthew Rycroft, records Blair saying: ‘We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action.’ Blair was confident that if he could get ‘the political context right, people would support regime change’.105
Many months before the quest for a UN resolution and the elaborate games over weapons inspections, Tony Blair was already committed to following George Bush. The mission he now set himself was to persuade Britain to follow him.
6. Tell Me No Secrets
‘I think I’m going to have to do it,’ Tony Blair confided to Barry Cox. The Prime Minister and his old friend were having a long conversation about war in Iraq while on holiday together in the south of France in August 2002.
‘Well, it’s running away from you, the argument is running away from you,’ cautioned Cox. ‘The public, the party and the papers are clearly getting opposed to any intervention in Iraq.’
Blair nodded: ‘Yes, I know that.’1 Then he outlined his masterplan. Convinced as ever of his powers of persuasion, he still thought he could influence George Bush not to act unilaterally but to use the UN as the instrument to confront Saddam. As for the mounting opposition at home, he had a solution to that problem too. The result would be a dossier, conceived in a panic, drafted in a frenzy, published with hyperbole and resulting in the most calamitous consequences for his premiership.
Many of those close to him noted that Blair had stiffened over the summer. Alastair Campbell found ‘TB a lot steelier than when he went on holiday. Clear that getting Saddam was the right thing to do.’2 His new Cabinet Secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull, took up the post in September and ‘by the time I arrived it was clear that he’d made up his mind that if the Americans went to war, he would definitely be with them and his task was to create support for war.’3
To Cox, ‘he certainly gave every appearance of having made the decision by the summer of 2002.’4 Sir Stephen Wall, a senior adviser on foreign affairs, concluded that ‘Tony Blair made his mind up in the middle of 2002 that he was going to go to war. He conducted the whole of the subsequent Cabinet meetings very skilfully, but on the basis that he was driving the policy and the others were acquiescing.’5 Iain Duncan Smith, who was leading the Conservatives in support of confronting Saddam, went to Number 10 for a private briefing in September. Blair began the meeting by thanking the Tory leader for sending flowers to Cherie after her miscarriage. When they’d finished discussing Iraq, Duncan Smith came away with no doubt about Blair’s intent. ‘He’d decided this was a successful formul
a. He’d done Kosovo. He’d done Afghanistan. It was what he believed in. He was of the mindset that good social democrats should not tolerate despotic foreign countries if they didn’t have to. He wanted to do Saddam.’6
Admiral Michael Boyce ‘started to put meat on the bones’ of the planning for war.7 But Blair asked the Chief of the Defence Staff ‘to keep your thoughts to yourself’ for fear that it would show too much of his hand.
While the Prime Minister was becoming more hawkish, his country was moving in the opposite direction. Opinion polls suggested that more and more voters were opposed to military action. The nerve endings of Labour MPs and Cabinet ministers were electric with anxiety about any rumour of war. When colleagues urged that there should be a recall of Parliament, Blair was initially resistant, not least because it would mean having to reconvene the Cabinet as well.8 Neil Kinnock, the impeccably loyal former Labour leader and Blair’s first political patron, expresses the mood in the party:
There was profound disagreement with and deep resentment against Tony Blair’s association with George Bush. There was bafflement and anger about the nature of the relationship, and also about the fact that the loyalty and support appeared to be going in one direction. In raw terms, it was what the hell is a Labour Prime Minister doing in such proximity to, above all people, George Bush?9
Blair now had two imperatives: to move Bush into a more internationalist position and to persuade Britain to embrace the view that Saddam was a menace who had to be confronted. He had to sell war to the British and diplomacy to the Americans.
David Manning had crossed the Atlantic at the end of July to impress upon Condi Rice how essential it was for Blair that they went down the UN route. He told her plainly: ‘We need this.’10 The next morning, the National Security Adviser took Manning into the Oval Office so that he could deliver the plea direct to Bush. During August, Jack Straw made a dash across the Atlantic for a clandestine meeting with Colin Powell.11 Both the US Secretary of State and his British counterpart were privately alarmed that their leaders were building an unstoppable momentum towards an invasion. The Cabinet Secretary ‘knew the Foreign Secretary had doubts about it. Jack Straw and Colin Powell were going back and forth saying: “Oh Christ, what have our bosses got us into.” ’12
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