It’s grotesque we only learn squalid truth drip by drip
More than 12 years have elapsed since George W Bush and Tony Blair’s catastrophic invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Yet thanks to a sustained and concerted establishment cover- up, many crucial f acts about t he i nvasion r emain secret.
As a result, any fresh revelation about the background to the invasion still has the capacity to shock.
The email sent by Secretary of State Colin Powell to George W Bush ahead of Blair’s visit to the then US president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, falls squarely into this category.
Huge mystery has always surrounded this Crawford visit, which took place 11 months before the outbreak of war the following year.
Nobody knows exactly what was discussed between Blair and Bush. Most unusually for a summit meeting, the two world leaders were left alone together for long periods of time with no officials present to advise them or to take notes.
It is true that a mountain of circumstantial evidence suggests that Tony Blair (who was accompanied by Cherie and family on his trip to the Bush ranch) did make some kind of secret commitment to support George W in his plan to invade Iraq.
Sir Christopher Meyer (then British Ambassador to the United States, and at the heart of pre-war negotiations) hinted at a confidential understanding in his autobiography.
He wrote that, by the time of the Crawford meeting ‘Tony Blair had already taken the decision to support regime change, though he was discreet about saying so in public’.
However, Tony Blair has always emphatically denied this. In public comments at the time – and later when interviewed by the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war – Mr Blair insisted that ‘all options were on the table’.
Furthermore, there has never been any proof of a private arrangement. Hence the importance of the bombshell memo from Colin Powell, which was sent to the president in March 2002, a week ahead of the arrival of t he British prime minister at Crawford.
The Powell memorandum makes clear that ‘On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary’.
There are no ifs, buts, or qualifications. Powell asserts that Tony Blair is ready to go to war.
In return, says Powell, Blair wants one big favour: ‘ His voters will look for signs that Britain and America are truly equity partners in the special relationship.’
So here is the bargain: Blair pledges military support for Ameri can president over Iraq and George W Bush promotes Tony Blair as respected global leader.
Looked at in retrospect, there’s no doubt both men kept their side of the bargain.
So is this the ‘smoking gun’ that proves beyond all doubt that a secret deal was agreed at Crawford to go to war?
Supporters of Tony Blair can argue t hat t he Powell memorandum is consistent with Blair’s publicly expressed commitment to disarming Iraq by peaceful means if possible – and by military means if peaceful means don’t work.
Powell doesn’t say that Blair promised to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by mili- tary means alone. Nevertheless, the Powell memorandum adds to the already strong body of evidence that Tony Blair made a stronger commitment to the US president than he ever let on to British voters.
It should be read alongside the memo written by David Manning (then Tony Blair’s foreign affairs adviser) following his own pre-Crawford meeting with George Bush’s security adviser, Condi Rice. Manning reported to Blair that he had told Rice ‘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’.
Regime change – without the support of the UN Security Council – is illegal under international law. The following year, notoriously, Blair and Bush went to war without the necessary United Nations authorisation – hence the belief of almost all legal experts that the war was illegal.
Just as important, this Powell memo provides a devastating fresh insight into the relationship between Tony Blair and George W Bush.
The British prime minister appears to be offering himself to the US president as a superior international PR adviser.
For example, Powell tells the president that ‘he will offer to you strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause’.
One of these ‘public affairs lines’ is breathtakingly cynical.
Powell tells the president that Tony Blair wants to help him ‘demonstrate t hat we have thought through “the day after”.’
There i s no suggestion of any kind in the memorandum that Blair wants to make a serious c o nt r i buti o n to t he postwar planning.
According to Powell, he sees it purely as a public relations matter that needs to be addressed.
In truth, the post-war planning turned out to be very much more than a perception problem. It was a dreadful calamity. It was poorly thought through, and plans were never implemented.
The decision to disband Saddam’s army led to a long and bloody insurgency against occupation forces. Indeed, the rise of ISIS across Iraq and Syria results from errors made by Coalition forces in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.
What classic Blairism to address a matter of such fundamental importance as post-invasion planning as a trivial PR exercise!
Colin Powell also tells the president that Tony Blair is ready to make ‘a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace’.
Here we gain an insight into the origin of the infamous dossier of September 2002, which made a series of false claims about Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in order to galvanise British public opinion in support of the war.
The Powell memorandum has emerged by chance following the US court order forcing Hillary Clinton to release the thousands of emails held on her private server while she was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.
Its emergence is a fresh reminder of the failure of the Chilcot Inquiry i nto the Iraq war to publish its findings.
Sir John Chilcot’s report is now almost five years behind schedule, and there are no signs of imminent publication.
It is grotesque that the truth about the background to the war should drip out through leaks like this one, rather than through an authoritative report.
This failure has now become a national scandal.
Nevertheless, Chilcot must pause to consider very carefully this Colin Powell memorandum because of the squalid new light it sheds on the secret dealings between Downing Street and the White House as the clock ticked down to war.