The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
preparations
might have begun in Washington for an attack on Iraq.
Even
then I gave
these relatively little credence … my conception of the
difficulties
and
downsides of taking on such a task outweighed my understanding of
the
determination
of the Bush Administration to undertake such an
initiative.”251
681.
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock told the Inquiry:
“It wasn’t
until the Crawford meeting … that I realised that the United
Kingdom was
being drawn
into quite a different sort of discussion, but that discussion was
not
made
totally visible to me … nor did I have any instructions to behave
any differently
in the
United Nations as a result of what might have been going on in
bilateral
discussions
with the United States.
“… I wasn’t
being politically naive, but I wasn’t being politically informed
either, and
I had
a job to do to maximise the strength of the United Nations
instruments on Iraq
at the time
… and that continued to mean acting under the resolutions we
had.”252
682.
Sir David
Manning told the Inquiry:
“Our view,
the Prime Minister’s view, the British Government’s view
throughout
this
episode was that the aim was disarmament. It was not regime change.
The
Prime
Minister never made any secret of the fact that if the result of
disarming
Saddam was
regime change, he thought this would be a positive thing, but,
for
the
Americans, it was. It was, ‘We want regime change in order to
disarm Saddam
683.
Sir David told
the Inquiry that at Crawford Mr Blair was saying:
“Yes, there
is a route through this that is a peaceful and international one,
and
it is
through the UN, but, if it doesn’t work, we will be ready to
undertake regime
684.
Sir David
Manning believed Mr Blair had wanted to influence US
policy
towards Iraq:
“I think
that when it became clear … that the United States was thinking of
moving
its policy
forward towards regime change, he [Mr Blair] wanted to try and
influence
the United
States and get it to stay in the UN, to go the UN route, which is
what we
spent the
rest of the year trying to do, but he was willing to signal that he
accepted
that
disarmament might not be achieved through the UN
route.
“But I
don’t think he felt … that these were moments of decision in
February and
March
before he went to Crawford. I think he saw that much more as an
attempt
251
Statement,
November 2009, page 5.
252
Public
hearing, 27 November 2009, pages 24-25.
253
Public
hearing, 30 November 2009, page 24
254
Public
hearing, 30 November 2009, page 58.
512