{"id":281208,"date":"2025-07-22T00:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T00:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/281208\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T00:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T00:41:10","slug":"britain-told-us-that-invading-iraq-could-cost-blair-his-premiership-papers-reveal-national-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/281208\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain told US that invading Iraq could cost Blair his premiership, papers reveal | National Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"

The stark terms in which the US was warned that invading Iraq without a second UN security council resolution could cost Tony Blair<\/a> his premiership have been revealed in newly released documents.<\/p>\n

Blair\u2019s foreign policy adviser, David Manning, warned Condoleezza Rice<\/a>, the then US national security adviser: \u201cThe US must not promote regime change in Baghdad at the price of regime change in London.\u201d<\/p>\n

The meeting between the two took place before Blair visited the US president, George W Bush, at Camp David on 31 January 2003, two months before the Iraq<\/a> invasion.<\/p>\n

While the US had not yet decided on a second security council resolution, Blair\u2019s objectives at Camp David were to convince the US a second resolution was \u201cpolitically essential for the UK and almost certainly legally essential as well\u201d, and to hold off from a February invasion until the end of March, according to a briefing note to Blair from Manning released by the National Archives<\/a> in London.<\/p>\n

In a separate 29 January memo to Blair marked \u201csecret \u2013 strictly personal, very sensitive\u201d, Manning said he told Rice: \u201cA second resolution is a political necessity for you [Blair] domestically. Without it, you would not secure cabinet and parliamentary support for military action. She must understand that you could be forced from office if you tried. The US must not promote regime change in Baghdad at the price of regime change in London.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manning wrote: \u201cI said that Bush could afford to gamble. He wanted a second resolution but it was not crucial to him. He already had congressional authority to act unilaterally. This was quite different from the situation you were facing.<\/p>\n

\u201cCondi acknowledged this but said that there came a point in any poker game when you had to show your cards. I said that was fine for Bush. He would still be at the table if he showed his cards later. You would not.\u201d<\/p>\n

From left: Manning, Rice, Bush and Blair at Camp David in 2002. Photograph: Paul J Richards\/EPA<\/p>\n

The Americans were becoming increasingly impatient with the unwillingness of France and Russia \u2013 which both had a veto on the UN security council \u2013 to agree a resolution so long as UN inspectors were unable to find any evidence of Saddam Hussein\u2019s weapons of mass destruction, the supposed justification for war.<\/p>\n

After Bush\u2019s annual State of the Union address to Congress, shortly before Blair\u2019s visit, the UK\u2019s Washington ambassador, Christopher Meyer, warned that the options for a peaceful solution had effectively run out.<\/p>\n

Meyer described Bush\u2019s message on Iraq by this point as \u201cmessianic\u201d. It was now \u201cpolitically impossible\u201d for Bush to back down from war \u201cabsent Saddam\u2019s surrender or disappearance from the scene\u201d, he wrote.<\/p>\n

The then US ambassador Christopher Meyer said Bush was bent on overthrowing Saddam Hussein as part of a \u2018mission to rid the world of evil-doers\u2019. Photograph: Fiona Hanson\/PA<\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s State of the Union address had closed off any room for manoeuvre, Meyer informed London: \u201cIn the high-flown prose to which Bush is drawn on these set-piece occasions, he said in effect that destroying Saddam is a crusade against evil to be undertaken by God\u2019s chosen people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another cable the previous month, he said of Bush: \u201cHis view of the world is Manichean. He sees his mission as ridding it of evil-doers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, the US and UK abandoned their efforts to get agreement on a resolution, claiming the French president, Jacques Chirac, had made it clear he would never agree.<\/p>\n

In another briefing note before Camp David, the Ministry of Defence<\/a> warned: \u201cThe loosening of Saddam\u2019s grip on power may give rise to significant levels of internecine violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the key findings of the Chilcot report<\/a> was that Blair had ignored warnings on what would happen in Iraq after invasion, and it rejected Blair\u2019s claim that the subsequent chaos and sectarian conflict could not have been predicted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The stark terms in which the US was warned that invading Iraq without a second UN security council…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-281208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114894109593744995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}