The government of former British prime minister Tony Blair decided up to a year before the Iraq invasion that it was “a complete waste of time” to resist the US drive to oust former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, opting instead to offer advice on how it should be done, the former British ambassador to Washington said on Thursday.
Sir Christopher Meyer, testifying to the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s role in the war, made it clear that once the administration of former US president George W. Bush decided to take military action, the Blair government never considered opting out or opposing it.
Meyer said that the timing of the invasion was dictated by the “unforgiving nature” of the military build-up rather than the outcome of diplomacy or UN weapons inspections. British officials were left scrabbling for evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as preparations continued.
Meyer described a critical moment in March 2002, as Blair was preparing a visit to Bush’s ranch.
New instructions were brought to the embassy by the prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser, Sir David Manning.
The message from London was that the US was determined to oust Saddam, “and it was a complete waste of time ... if we were going to work with the Americans, to come to them and bang away about regime change and say: ‘We can’t support it.’”
He rejected the suggestion that British policy changed to stay in line with Washington.
“I wouldn’t say it was as extremely poodle-ish as that,” Meyer said, arguing Blair had long been a “true believer about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein.”
He conceded the conditions Blair put on supporting regime change — action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and going through the UN on Iraq — “were a bit feeble.”
Meyer said there was a “sea change” in Washington’s attitude to Iraq in the months after Sept. 11, 2001. In his briefing notes before the Texas summit, Meyer advised Blair to focus on how to garner international support for regime change, how to go about ousting Saddam, and what to do in the aftermath.
At the meeting, he said Bush and Blair spent “a large chunk of time” together with no advisers present.
“To this day I’m not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch,” he said, adding that Blair provided a clue the next day when he mentioned “regime change” in Iraq for the first time.
“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,” Meyer said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS