Blair was warned George Bush had 'Manichean' mindset over Iraq, archives reveal
Britain's ambassador said US president saw his mission as 'ridding the world of evildoers' in lead up to invasion
Tony Blair was warned by Britain’s ambassador to the US that George W Bush was bent on the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as part of a “mission” to rid the world of “evil-doers”, newly-released government files show.
In January 2003 – two months before US and UK forces launched their fateful invasion – the-then Prime Minister Blair to flew to Camp David to urge the US President to allow more time for diplomacy to work.
However, files released to the National Archives at Kew, show that Sir Christopher Meyer warned it had become “politically impossible” to draw back from war unless Hussein surrendered.
In a cable sent to the prime minister’s office in December 2002, Sir Christopher said that much of the impulse for deposing Hussein was coming from the president, a born-again Christian, who was scornful of what he saw as the “self-serving” reservations of the Europeans.
“Much of the impulse for deposing Saddam Hussein comes from Bush himself. More than anything else, he fears another catastrophic terrorist attack on the homeland, especially one with an Iraqi connection,” the ambassador wrote.
“His view of the world is Manichean. He sees his mission as ridding it of evildoers. He believes American values should be universal values.
“He finds the Europeans’ differentiation between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein self-serving. He is strongly allergic to Europeans collectively.
“Anyone who has sat round a dinner table with low-church Southerners will find these sentiments instantly recognisable.”
At the time, British officials were still hoping that the the United Nations Security Council would agree a new resolution specifically authorising the use of military force against Iraq.
Blair’s foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, said that when he met the president he should make the point that a new resolution was “politically essential for the UK, and almost certainly legally essential as well”.
However, the Americans were becoming increasingly impatient with the unwillingness of France and Russia – which both had a veto on the council – to agree a resolution so long as UN inspectors were unable to find any evidence of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the supposed justification for war.
Following Bush’s annual State of the Union address to Congress, shortly before Blair’s visit, he warned that the options for a peaceful solution had effectively run out.
“It is politically impossible for Bush to back down from going to war in Iraq this spring, absent Saddam’s surrender or disappearance from the scene” he wrote.
“If Bush had any room for manoeuvre beforehand this was closed off by his State of the Union speech.
“In 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’s chosen people.”
In the event, the US and UK abandoned their efforts to get agreement on a new Security Council resolution, claiming French president Jacques Chirac had made it clear he would never agree.
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