3.1 | Development of UK strategy and options, 9/11 to early January 2002

105. Dr Rice wrote that after 9/11:

“No security issue ever looked quite the same again, and every day our

overwhelming preoccupation was to avoid another attack … Our entire concept

of what constituted security had been shaken.”55

106. Mr Tenet wrote:

“After 9/11, everything changed. Many foreign policy issues were now viewed

through the prism of smoke rising from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

For many in the Bush administration, Iraq was unfinished business. They seized

on the emotional impact of 9/11 and created a psychological connection between

the failure to act decisively against Al Qaida and the danger posed by Iraq’s WMD

programs. The message was: We can never afford to be surprised again … we

might wake up one day to find that Saddam possessed a nuclear weapon, and then

our ability to deal with him would take on an entirely different cast.

“… it seemed a given that the United States had not done enough to stop Al Qaida …

and had paid an enormous price. Therefore … we could not allow ourselves to be

in a similar situation in Iraq.”56

107. Sir Peter Ricketts, Chairman of the JIC until September 2001 and subsequently

FCO Political Director until July 2003, told the Inquiry that “through to 9/11, the dominant

player [on Iraq policy in Washington] was the State Department”; but after 9/11 the

dominant force changed.57

108. Sir David Manning, Mr Blair’s Foreign Policy Adviser and Head of the Cabinet

Office Overseas and Defence Secretariat (OD Sec), told the Inquiry that “Indefinite

containment … looked increasingly implausible”. After 9/11 the mood in Washington

had “changed dramatically” and “tolerance for containment had changed”.58

109. Mr Powell told the Inquiry that the US saw 9/11 as a “Pearl Harbour of the 21st

Century”; they were being attacked at home and that made them “much more willing to

be pre-emptive”.59

110. Mr Straw told the Inquiry that 9/11 changed everything and that in his view “people

in Europe still don’t quite comprehend the degree”.60 Mr Straw added that the attacks

led to a consensus across the world that a policy of tolerating failing or failed states was

unacceptable. The perception of risk changed.

55 Rice C. No Higher Honour. Simon & Schuster, 2011.

56 Tenet G & Harlow B. At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. HarperPress, 2007.

57 Public hearing, 24 November 2009, page 24.

58 Public hearing, 30 November 2009, pages 28-29.

59 Public hearing, 18 January 2010, page 15.

60 Public hearing, 21 January 2010, pages 6-7.

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