Intelligence

Between Iraq and a hard place

Scotsman.com News - Opinion - Between Iraq and a hard place

CHRIS DEERIN

JACK STRAW did not mince his words. "The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few. The risks are high, both for you and the government." The memo from Tony Blair’s cerebral, methodical Foreign Secretary landed in Downing Street on March 25, 2002, days before the Prime Minister was due to fly to George Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas.

There was only one serious topic to be discussed between Prime Minister and president. By that stage it was clear that the Bush administration, pumped up after a triumphant military campaign in Afghanistan, was intent on regime change in Iraq, almost certainly through further military action. Two months before, in January, Bush had placed Iraq alongside North Korea and Iran in his famous "Axis of Evil" speech. In private, he had bluntly told Condoleezza "Condi" Rice, his national security adviser: "F*** Saddam. We’re taking him out."

For Blair, although the politics were complicated, the decision was relatively simple: it was in Britain’s interests to stand by its transatlantic cousin. Iraq would be invaded, and Saddam Hussein deposed; all that remained to be decided was how, and when.

But Straw was determined to set out the scale of the task ahead. "I judge that there is at present no majority inside the Parliamentary Labour Party for any military action against Iraq (alongside a greater readiness to surface their concerns)," read the memo.

"Colleagues know that Saddam and the Iraqi regime are bad. But we have a long way to go to convince them as to: the scale of the threat from Iraq and why this has got worse recently; what distinguishes the Iraqi threat from that of e.g. Iran and North Korea so as to justify military action; the justification for any military action in terms of international law; and whether the consequence of military action really would be a compliant, law-abiding replacement government."

The Foreign Secretary’s points were well made. In fact, they were to dominate not just the run-up to war, but the long, drawn-out aftermath too. Blair’s attempts to address them in order to sell the war to not just his party, but his country, would throw his government into a crisis of unprecedented proportions.

It was the last of Straw’s points which has returned to haunt Blair this weekend - the ability of a coalition force to install a "compliant, law-abiding replacement government". As a chaotic post-war Iraq flirts with outright civil war more than a year after the downfall of Saddam, as Iraqis and coalition troops are slaughtered daily, and as the prospect of a peaceful settlement recedes, it is here that the Foreign Secretary looks to have been most prescient.

The leak of a series of startling memos surrounding the run-up to war, to yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, has revealed that at the centre of government there were grave doubts about the efficacy of an invasion. There was particular concern about a lack of post-war planning, and what the consequences of toppling Saddam would be.

"What will this action achieve?" wrote Straw. "There seems to be a larger hole in this than anything. Most of the assessments from the US have assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq’s WMD threat.

"But none has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured, and how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better. Iraq has no history of democracy so no one has this habit."

Blair was caught on the horns of a dilemma. The Bush administration had decided to go to war with or without the co-operation of its international allies. The Prime Minister was fearful of the consequences of allowing Bush to pursue a unilateralist course, of allowing America to develop a "go-it-alone" habit.

In any case, there was also the small matter of Blair, the moral interventionist, believing that the removal of Saddam was a justifiable step. It was "the right thing to do", he told his aides. Visitors to his Downing Street study would be given a lecture: "I can’t understand why people on the left oppose it. I know why the isolationists on the right are against it... but hasn’t the left always been committed to fighting injustice in the world?" In light of these facts, the best Blair could do - all he really wanted to do - was to delay US military action long enough to bring the international community on board.

The left weren’t convinced, however. In early March there was growing unrest on the backbenches over the path Blair seemed set upon. More than 60 MPs had signed an early day motion opposing war, a figure which was rising daily. There was also trouble in the cabinet, where both Robin Cook, leader of the Commons, and Clare Short, the international development secretary, were making noises about resignation if an invasion went ahead.

In Cook’s diaries he reveals that during a Cabinet meeting in February 2002 he had argued that the rest of the Arab world would not understand the obsession with Iraq. "Somewhat to my surprise this line provides a round of ‘hear, hearing’ from colleagues, which is the nearest I heard to mutiny in the cabinet," reports Cook. On March 5, David Blunkett questioned at another Cabinet meeting whether there was a legal basis for action against Iraq.

With this undercurrent of opposition Blair was hoping for some good news when he was presented with a Secret UK Eyes Only "options paper", given to him on March 8 by the Cabinet Office Overseas and Defence Secretariat. He was out of luck. The reasons behind the US’s determination to invade Iraq were not what the Premier needed to hear. "The success of Operation Enduring Freedom [in Afghanistan], distrust of UN sanctions and inspection regimes, and unfinished business from 1991 [the first Gulf War] are all factors," the paper claimed. As for finding a legal justification for war: "Subject to law officers’ advice, none currently exists."

The paper got worse. There was no greater threat that Saddam would use chemical or biological weapons now than there had been at any time in the recent past; regime change had no basis in international law; and there was no evidence that Iraq was backing international terrorism to justify an action based on self-defence.

This, Blair knew, was not how America viewed things. "Washington believes the legal basis for an attack on Iraq already exists," said the paper, warning that "the US may be willing to work with a much smaller coalition than we think." The likely financial cost to Britain of an invasion was set out, alongside an assertion that troops would need to stay in Iraq for "many years". Then came a similar warning to Straw’s: that a new regime in Iraq may turn out to be as bad as Saddam’s - and may even attempt to secure WMD of its own.

In its totality the Cabinet Office paper laid out in stark detail what Blair was committing himself to. There was going to be a war, and Bush was keen to kick things off in the autumn. If Blair was to achieve his delay he must do the following: "Consider a staged approach, establishing international support, building up pressure on Saddam, and developing military plans."

It was now that George Bush upped the ante. On March 11, in a speech in the White House Rose Garden to mark the six-month anniversary of 9/11, the President said: "Inaction is not an option. Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death." Bush didn’t mention Saddam by name, but then he didn’t need to.

Blair needed to act fast. He dispatched Sir David Manning, his foreign policy adviser, to Washington in an attempt to slow the administration down. Manning’s subsequent memo was optimistic. "Prime Minister, I had dinner with Condi on Tuesday; and talks and lunch with her and an NSC [National Security Council] team on Wednesday ... These were good exchanges, and particularly frank when we were one-on-one at dinner."

Manning went on: "It is clear that Bush is grateful for your support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge on your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option.

"Condi’s enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed. But there were some signs, since we last spoke, of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks."

Rice had told Manning that Bush still needed to find answers to "the big questions": how to secure support for military action in Iraq from the international community, what value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition, and, tellingly, "what happens on the morning after?"

During Blair’s trip to Crawford, Bush would "want to pick your brains. He will also want to hear whether he can expect coalition support."

Manning’s tone must have given Blair heart, especially when he stated that "my talks with Condi convinced me that Bush wants to hear your views on Iraq before taking decisions".

"He also wants your support. He is still smarting from the comments by other European leaders on his Iraq policy. This gives you real influence: on the public relations strategy; on the UN and weapons inspections; and on US planning for a military campaign. This could be critically important. I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties. They may agree that failure isn’t an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it."

Following the adviser’s trip, further pressure was added by Sir Christopher Meyer, the British ambassador in Washington, who lunched with Paul Wolfowitz, the most hawkish member of the Bush administration, and laid out the British case as Manning had done with Rice.

As Blair prepared for his trip to Texas, Straw was preparing his memo for the Prime Minister. The Foreign Secretary’s policy director, Peter Ricketts, provided his thoughts to his boss in a confidential memo on March 22.

The Prime Minister, wrote Ricketts, was in a position to influence both the aims and methods of the US administration with regards to Iraq. "He can help Bush make good decisions by telling him things his own machine probably isn’t."

Ricketts also set out what he saw as the main problems. Even the best surveys of Iraq’s WMD programmes showed little advance in recent years, while US attempts to link Saddam to al-Qaeda had been so far "frankly unconvincing ... To get public and Parliamentary support for military options we have to be convincing that the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for."

Again, concerns were raised about the condition of a post-war Iraq, what Ricketts called "the end state". "Regime change does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge match between Bush and Saddam," he wrote, adding that there was nothing to stop a new leader developing WMD. "It would be almost impossible to maintain UN sanctions on a new leader who came in promising a fresh start."

As the series of leaked memos shows, by the time Blair helicoptered into Bush’s ranch on April 5, he had been left in little doubt as to the concerns of his backbench MPs, cabinet colleagues and expert advisers. He should have gone in prepared to tackle three challenges: one, persuading Bush to put off his planned autumn invasion; two, establishing a basis for war which would satisfy global lawyers; three, ensuring there were credible plans for how to cope with a post-conflict Iraq.

Blair achieved his first goal when the President agreed to delay military action until March, in order to try for United Nations backing. As the Butler report revealed, they also discussed "the importance of presentational activity on Iraq’s breaches (and other issues) to persuade other members of the United Nations Security Council as well as domestic audiences of the case for action to enforce disarmament." There is no evidence that any time was spent on the third point - on what would happen on "the morning after", despite the warnings from Ricketts to Straw, and, separately, from Straw, Manning and the Cabinet Office to Blair.

The Prime Minister flew out of the Crawford summit, which even this far ahead of military action had been dubbed a "war council", on April 7, heading back to Britain for the funeral of the Queen Mother. He had, he believed, successfully shimmied his way around one hurdle, but there was a great deal of work still to be done, among Labour MPs and ministers, and among fellow world leaders making hostile noises over the Iraq plan.

Some of these problems he would go on to square, some he would be forced to give up on. Two years later, however, Blair’s biggest problem is that with Saddam gone, his failure to pin Bush down on his plans for "the morning after" now looks like his greatest blunder.

DESCENT INTO TURMOIL

April 7, 2002 Blair flies home after ‘council of war’ at President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.

November 8 UN Security Council resolution threatens Saddam with "serious consequences" if he does not disarm.

Dec 7 UN receives declaration denying Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. United States says declaration is untruthful and UN says it is incomplete.

March 7, 2003 United States, Britain and Spain propose ordering Hussein to give up banned weapons by March 17 or face war. Other UN states, led by France, oppose any new resolution that would authorise military action.

March 17 US, Britain and Spain declare time for diplomacy over, withdraw proposed resolution. President Bush gives Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq.

March 20 US forces open war with military strike on Dora Farms, a target south of Baghdad, where Hussein and his sons are said to be. The Iraqi leader appears on television later in the day.

April 9 Jubilant crowds greet US troops in Baghdad, go on looting rampages, topple 40ft statue of Saddam.

July 22 Saddam’s sons, Qusay and Uday, killed in gun battle with US troops.

August 19 Bomb destroys the UN headquarters, killing 22 people, including special envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

November US administrator Paul Bremer announces that the coalition would hand power to an interim government by June 30.

Dec 13 Saddam captured in the town of Adwar, 10 miles south of Tikrit.

June 2004 Sovereignty handed over early to interim Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi.

July 6 Amid continuing failure to discover evidence of Saddam’s alleged weapons programme, Tony Blair admits that WMD may never be found.

September 19, 2004 at 10:56 AM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (27) | Top of page | Blog Home