The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
“As with
the fight against UBL, Bush would do well to de-personalise the
objective,
focus on
elimination of WMD, and show that he is serious about UN Inspectors
as
the first
choice means of achieving that (it is win/win for him: either
Saddam against
all the
odds allows Inspectors to operate freely, in which case we can
further hobble
his WMD
programmes, or he blocks/hinders, and we are on stronger ground
for
switching
to other methods).”
467.
Mr Ricketts
concluded:
“Defining
the end state in this way, and working through the UN, will … also
help
maintain a
degree of support among the Europeans, and therefore fits with
another
message
which the Prime Minister will want to get across: the importance
of
positioning
Iraq as a problem for the international community as a whole, not
just
for the
US.”
468.
In a personal
minute to Mr Blair on 25 March, Mr Straw advised:
“The
rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few. The risks are
high, both for you
and for the
Government. I judge that there is at present no majority inside the
PLP
for any
military action against Iraq …”165
469.
Mr Straw wrote
that making the case that “Saddam and the Iraq regime are
bad”
was “easy”,
but there were four areas where there was:
“a long way
to go to convince them as to:
(a) the
scale of the threat from Iraq and why this has got worse
recently;
(b) what
distinguishes the Iraqi threat from that of eg Iran and North
Korea
so as to
justify military action;
(c) the
justification for any military action in terms of international
law;
(d) whether
the consequence of military action really would be a compliant,
law
abiding
replacement government.
“The whole
exercise is made much more difficult to handle as long as
conflict
between
Israel and the Palestinians is so acute …”
470.
Mr Straw
advised that the Iraqi regime posed “a most serious threat to
its
neighbours,
and therefore to international security” but, from “the documents
so far
presented
it has been hard to glean whether the threat from Iraq is so
significantly
165
Minute
Straw to Prime Minister, 25 March 2002,
‘Crawford/Iraq’.
470