4.1 |
Iraq WMD assessments, pre-July 2002
“US
scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaida is so far
frankly
unconvincing.
To get public and Parliamentary support for military operations
we
have to be
convincing that:
•
the threat
is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die
for;
•
it is
qualitatively different from the threat posed by other
proliferators who are
closer to
achieving nuclear capability (including Iran).
“We can
make the case on qualitative difference (only Iraq has attacked
a
neighbour,
used CW and fired missiles against Israel). But the overall
strategy needs
to include
re-doubled efforts to tackle other proliferators … in other ways …
But we
are still
left with a problem of bringing public opinion to accept the
imminence of a
threat from
Iraq. This is something the Prime Minister and President need to
have a
frank
discussion about.”
394.
Mr Ricketts’
advice on the second problem, the end state of military operations,
is
addressed
in Section 3.2.
395.
In a separate
minute to Mr William Patey, FCO Director Middle East, and
others on
22 March,
Mr Ricketts wrote:
“We now
have a bit more time to prepare the public dossier of material on
Iraq. We
need to use
it to ensure that the material is accurate and meets the
presentational
396.
Mr Ricketts
added that he had asked No.10 to consider asking the Cabinet
Office
to take
forward work on the dossier through an inter-departmental group.
That would
need
to:
“… ensure
that the US policy community gets enough time to consider our
draft
paper and
comment on it. Ideally, David Manning would send it to Condi Rice
soon
as work in
progress … We will need to keep the Embassy in Washington and
UKMIS
New York in
the loop.”
397.
Mr Ricketts
envisaged that the dossier would also be sent to key European
allies in
advance of
publication.
398.
A manuscript
note on Mr Ricketts’ minute from Mr Matthew Rycroft,
Mr Blair’s
Private
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, recorded that Sir David Manning had
agreed an
inter-departmental
group chaired by Mr McKane “could usefully meet after Easter
on the
173
Minute
Ricketts to Patey, 22 March 2002, ‘Iraq: Preparing Material for
Public Release’.
85