The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
“So we have
to re-order our story and message. Increasingly I think it
should
be about
the nature of the regime. We do intervene – as per the
Chicago
speech. We
have no inhibitions – where we reasonably can – about
nation-
building ie
we must come to our conclusion on Saddam from our own
position,
not the US
position.
“(3) Oil
prices. This is my big domestic worry. We must concert with the US
to get
action from
others to push the price back down. Higher petrol prices really
might
430.
Asked to
explain his thinking in the minute Mr Blair told the
Inquiry:
•
The first
sentence was asking: “How we would either get Saddam to
cease
being a
threat peacefully or to get him out by force.” He had been very
open
in public
about that. The minute was “more about the politics”.
•
The WMD
question was about the changed assessment of the risk and
the
difficulty
of making the case that Saddam Hussein posed a threat.
•
The message
had to address the nature of the regime and the security
threat
to command
the support of both the right and the left of the political
debate.
•
The change
in the security risk after 11 September was the basis for
changing
the regime
but the nature of the regime was why “we should be proud of
having
got rid of
him [Saddam Hussein]”.154
“So if
September 11 hadn’t happened, we would have carried on in the same
way
frankly
that George Bush and I first discussed … in February
2001.”
432.
From March
2002, the Security Service advised that, in the event of a
US
attempt to
topple Saddam Hussein’s regime, the threat to the UK and UK
interests
from Iraq
would be limited and containable.
433.
Consideration
of Iraq’s capability effectively to threaten the UK had begun
in
early 2002.
434.
On 22 March
2002, Ms Eliza Manningham-Buller, the Deputy Director General
of
the
Security Service, wrote to Mr John Gieve, the Permanent Secretary
of the Home
Office,
about the “possible terrorist consequences should the US, possibly
with UK
support,
seek to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq”.155
153
Minute
Blair to Powell, 17 March 2002, ‘Iraq’.
154
Public
hearing, 21 January 2011, pages 43-45.
155
Letter
Manningham-Buller to Gieve, 22 March 2002, ‘Iraq: Possible
Terrorist Response to a US Attack’.
464