3.2 |
Development of UK strategy and options, January to April 2002 –
“axis of evil” to Crawford
727.
Mr Blair said
that Iraq posed a “conjoined” threat, “it was an appalling regime
and
we couldn’t
run the risk of such a regime being allowed to develop
WMD”.293
728.
Mr Blair told
the Inquiry that the American position, after the passage of the
Iraq
Liberation
Act in 1998, was “for regime change” because it did not “trust he
[Saddam
Hussein] is
ever going to give up his WMD ambitions”. The UK position was: “We
have
to deal
with WMD ambitions. If that means regime change, so be it.” Mr
Blair’s view was
that they
were “different ways of expressing the same
proposition”.294
729.
In his memoir,
Mr Blair wrote that “planning was inevitable and right, not
because
war was
inevitable but because it was an option and … had to be planned
for”. The
meeting in
Crawford was “the first time we got to grips with it [Iraq]
properly”.295
“From my
standpoint, by this time, I had resolved in my own mind that
removing
Saddam
would do the world, and most particularly the Iraqi people, a
service.
Though I
knew regime change could not be our policy, I viewed a change
with
enthusiasm
not dismay.
“In my
Chicago speech of 1999, I had enunciated the new doctrine of
a
‘responsibility
to protect’, i.e. that a government could not be free grossly to
oppress
and
brutalise its citizens. I had put that into effect in Kosovo and
Sierra Leone.
“… because
war should be the last not the first resort, I had come to a
firm
conclusion
that we could only do it on the basis of non-compliance with
UN
resolutions.
Tyrant though he was, Saddam could not be removed on the
basis
of tyranny
alone.
…
“… I was
clear about two things.
“The first
was that Saddam had to be made to conform to the UN resolutions
…
“The second
was that Britain had to remain … ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with
America.
This is not
as crude or unthinking a policy as it sounds. It didn’t mean we
sacrificed
our
interest to theirs; or subcontracted out our foreign policy. It
meant that the
alliance
between our two nations was a vital strategic interest and, as far
as I was
concerned,
a vital strategic asset for Britain.
“It implied
we saw attacks on the US as attacks on us … It argued for an
attitude
that did
see us genuinely as at war together, with a common interest in a
successful
outcome …
our job as an ally … should be to be with them in their hour of
need.
293
Public
hearing, 29 January 2010, page 35.
294
Public
hearing, 29 January 2010, page 36.
295
Blair
T. A
Journey.
Hutchinson, 2010.
521