Blair Adviser: Bush Spoke Of Iraq Right After 9/11

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Blair adviser: Bush spoke of Iraq right after 9/11

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h3md2ReGxE9CkpczxPehN4pM-z7gD9C9VLDG0

By MEERA SELVA (AP) – 44 minutes ago

LONDON — Right after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, then-U.S. President George W. Bush talked about possible links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, a key adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday.

David Manning, who served as a Blair's top foreign policy aide before being appointed ambassador to Washington in 2003, told a British inquiry into the Iraq war that the issue came up in a phone call between the two leaders in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11.

"He (Bush) said that he thought there might be evidence that there was some connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida," Manning told the inquiry, the most exhaustive study yet into the conflict and its genesis.

Manning said that Blair counseled caution.

"The prime minister's response to this was that the evidence would have to be very compelling indeed to justify taking any action against Iraq," Manning said, adding that the British leader followed the conversation up with a letter stressing the need to focus on the situation in Afghanistan, where al-Qaida was based.

The inquiry, which is in its second week, already has heard evidence that the U.S. was gearing up for war with Iraq within months of the 2001 terror attacks in the United States.

Although the inquiry will not apportion blame or hold anyone liable for the conflict, it does have the potential to embarrass officials in the U.S. and Britain who argued — wrongly — that the war was justified because Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction and supporting al-Qaida.

Jeremy Greenstock, the former British ambassador to the United Nations, told the inquiry on Friday that the U.S. was "hell bent" on war with Iraq from the very beginning and undermined efforts by Britain to win international authorization for the invasion. Manning's predecessor as ambassador to the United States, Christopher Meyer, also testified that the U.S. was looking for connections between Iraq and Sept. 11 within hours of the attacks.

Manning said, "The Bush administration felt it has been caught napping by 9/11 and that this should not be allowed to happen again."

He said Blair accepted the possibility of military action in Iraq during a meeting with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. "I look back at Crawford as the moment that he (Blair) was saying: 'Yes, there is a route through this that is an international, peaceful one, and it is through the U.N. But if it doesn't work, we will be willing to undertake regime change.'"

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Chilcot inquiry hears Bush began Iraq war drumbeat three days after 9/11
Blair foreign policy adviser David Manning says US president talked up possible links between Saddam and al-Qaida

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/30/chilcott-inquiry-bush-blair-alqaida

Haroon Siddique and agencies guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 November 2009 17.45 GMT

George Bush tried to make a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida in a conversation with Tony Blair three days after the 9/11 attacks, according to Blair's foreign policy adviser of the time.

Sir David Manning told the official inquiry into the war that Bush, speaking to Blair by phone on 14 September 2001, "said that he thought there might be evidence that there was some connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida"."The prime minister's response to this was that the evidence would have to be very compelling indeed to justify taking any action against Iraq," Manning said.

Blair followed up the conversation with a letter stressing the need to focus on the situation in Afghanistan, where the attacks originated.

But by the time Blair went to visit Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002 the British were "very conscious that Iraq would be on the agenda", Manning said.

Manning, who was firmly ensconced in the Blair camp in the run up to the war, said both he and the prime minister told Bush it would be "impossible" for the UK to take part in action against Iraq unless it was through the UN. The UK's subsequent participation in the invasion alongside the US without UN backing was because Blair felt he had to be "as good as his word" to the US, Manning said.

Manning, who became ambassador to Washington in 2003, told the inquiry he personally "regretted" that diplomacy and weapons inspections were not given more time and that he thought it was "essential" to have a second UN resolution. But the US was convinced these measures were not working and that a second resolution was impossible.

Manning said Blair was so intent on diplomacy that he may even have affected military planning and there was probably "some uneasiness in the MoD about the lateness of decisions".

"There was a sense in the MoD, probably, that we had to try and ensure that the policy that we were following diplomatically did not mean that we were excluding military options," said Manning, stressing that he was not a military expert. "My impression was that he [Blair] was reluctant to take these decisions until he had to, that some might have said he went beyond the ideal of when he had to, he left it quite late. But I think he always felt that he wanted to give the sense that the diplomatic approach in the United Nations was paramount."

The original plan, until the end of 2002, was for British troops to go into northern Iraq. The British had to adapt their plan when in early 2003 Condoleezza Rice, Bush's secretary of state, called Manning to say Turkey was refusing to co-operate.

Asked about the "conditionality" Blair was supposed to have demanded from the US in return for Britain's co-operation, Manning said Blair pressed for a Middle East conference that did not happen.

He said post-war planning was a matter of concern and the British had insisted on a role for the UN. The "neocon wishful-thinking thesis" was that post-war Iraq would be like post-war Germany or Japan, said Manning. The British had thought the US state department would be in charge for post-war planning but it was the Pentagon that took responsibility.

"The Americans seemed to lose focus" after the initial overthrow of Saddam's regime, said Manning. He described as "limited" Britain's influence on the Coalition Provisional Authority, run by Paul Bremer, which disbanded the Iraqi army and purged members of Saddam's Ba'athist regime.