Amid the row about whether or not the new inquiry into Iraq is to be public (why, by the way, usher in an inquiry at all if you maintain you did nothing wrong?), there is one eye-catching sign of hope. Gordon Brown has said it will examine events from the summer of 2001. This means that at last we may be able to see how clearly the decision was a direct – and misplaced – reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks which had nothing to with Saddam. And, from a UK point of view, we may learn exactly at what point Tony Blair signed up to the invasion. We know from Bob Woodward’s books (as well as that Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were searching for an Iraq link immediately after 9-11) that President Bush told Blair four times in the build up to Iraq that he didn’t need British troops, and yet Blair was insistent on “paying the blood price”.
If the inquiry does its job, the full context of the infamous “Manning memo” – written by Blair’s foreign policy adviser David Manning as early as 14 March 2002 – may now emerge. Manning had dined with Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s National Security Adviser. He wrote: “We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq. It is clear that Bush is grateful for your support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States.”
And if it is proven that Blair had indeed signed up to “regime change” between summer 2001 and summer 2002, what of this statement, in February 2003? “I detest his regime, but even now he could save it by complying with the UN’s demands.”
Let’s hope the inquiry – whether in private or public – provides some answers.
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