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The Report of the Iraq Inquiry
668.  Mr Straw continued to make clear, as he had suggested in his letter of
25 March, that action in support of regime change in Iraq would be justified only
as a means to remove the threat from WMD.
669.  SIS activity was discussed in a meeting with Mr Straw and Mr Wright on 11 April.247
670.  Mr McDonald’s record of the meeting stated that Mr Straw had noted that:
“… legally and politically, regime change in Iraq was justified only as a means to
the end of removing the threat of their WMD. If Saddam Hussein were to allow
in weapons inspectors, that would change the equation: to seek regime change
would no longer be possible for us because our desired end state would have
been achieved.”
671.  Mr Straw also agreed with Mr Wright that the focus was on operations which built
up the forces of opposition and democracy.
The perceptions of key officials
672.  The evidence offered to the Inquiry and accounts in memoirs provide some
indications of the perceptions held by key officials about the UK’s strategy before
Mr Blair’s meeting with President Bush at Crawford.
673.  In his memoir, Sir Christopher Meyer described his view of the position before
Mr Blair’s meeting with President Bush.248 He wrote that the debate about Iraq in
Washington “had become deafening”, although on the eve of Mr Blair’s visit the
escalating violence between Israel and the Palestinians had “reached such a pitch that
for a while it pushed Iraq into the background”. It had been clear to him that President
Bush was:
“… determined to implement the official American policy of regime change; but the
how and when … were uncertain. It made war probable but not inevitable … There
were one or two people in Washington, whose judgement I respected, who thought
that when Bush finally realised the scale of his Iraqi ambition, he would see that the
risk was too great.
“It was time to put our fix into American thinking before it coagulated …”
674.  Sir Christopher added:
“The central issue was to influence the Americans. Blair had already taken the
decision to support regime change, though he was discreet about saying so
in public. It would be fruitless to challenge a fixed … policy that had bipartisan
support in the US. It was hard to see how Saddam could be de-fanged without
247  Minute McDonald to [SIS10], 12 April 2002, ‘[Name of Operation]’.
248  Meyer C. DC Confidential: The Controversial Memoirs of Britain’s Ambassador to the U.S. at the Time
of 9/11 and the Run-up to the Iraq War. Phoenix, 2006.
510
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