Middle East Eye has released a second memo written by Tony Blair’s top foreign policy advisor David Manning, this one written one day after the meeting between Blair and President G.W. Bush at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, on April 6, 2002. (The first was a Manning memo from before the Texas meeting.) The memo, first leaked to the Daily Mail, confirms that the war was set in motion even before this meeting, with no chance that any minor inconvenience (such as the UN proving that Iraq had no program to develop weapons of mass destruction) would stop it.
Middle East Eye reports: “The memo also reveals how as early as April 2002, more than eight months before United Nations weapons inspectors went into Iraq, Blair was aware that they might have to ‘adjust their approach’ should Saddam give them [weapons inspectors] free rein. This is believed to be the first reference to a strategy which ended with the creation of the infamous `dodgy dossier’ of concocted intelligence making the case for war, key details of which were later admitted to be false.”
Manning wrote about Bush: “He didn’t know who would take Saddam’s place if and when we toppled him. But he didn’t much care.”
Manning and then National Security Adviser Condi Rice attended some of the meetings between Bush and Blair. Manning wrote: “At present Centcom had no war plan as such. Thinking ahead so far was on a broad and central level, though a very small Centcom cell had recently been established in conditions of great secrecy to look at the detailed military planning. Condi Rice said 99 percent of Centcom were unaware of this. When it had done more work Bush would be ready to agree to U.K. and U.S. planners sitting down together to examine the options. He wanted us to work through the issues together. Whatever plan emerged we had to ensure victory. We could not afford to fail….
“Bush accepted we needed to manage the PR aspect of all this with great care. He accepted we needed to put Saddam on the spot over the UN inspectors, we should tell him that we wanted proof of his claim that he was not developing WMDs. This could only be forthcoming if UN inspectors were allowed in on the basis that they could go anywhere inside Iraq at any time.... He said the timing of any action against Saddam would be very important. He would not want to launch any operation before the U.S. Congressional elections in the autumn. Otherwise he would be accused of warmongering for electoral benefit. In effect this meant there was a window of opportunity between the beginning of November and the end of February.
“The PM said we needed an accompanying PR strategy that highlighted the risks of Saddam’s WMD program and his appalling human rights record. Bush strongly agreed. The PM said this approach would be important in managing European public opinion and in helping the President construct an international coalition. The PM would emphasize to European partners that Saddam was being given an opportunity to cooperate. If, as he expected, Saddam failed to do so, the Europeans would find it very much harder to resist the logic that we must take action to deal with an evil regime that threatens us with its WMD program. We would still face the question of why we had decided to act now, what had changed? The answer had to be that we must think ahead, this was one of the lessons of 9/11: failure to take action in good time meant the risks would only grow and might force us to take much more costly action later. The President agreed with Mr. Blair’s line of argument.”
Manning added his own comments to the report, including: “The PM later commented to me privately that he had spoken again to Bush about the issue of UN inspectors. Bush had acknowledged that there was just a possibility that Saddam would allow them in and go about their own business. If that happened we would have to adjust our approach accordingly.” (https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-war-bush-blair-secret-memo-reveal-plans-topple-saddam)
