Bush and Blair ‘talked about Iraq only three days after 9/11′
GEORGE Bush raised the issue of Iraq with Tony Blair only three days after the 9/11 attacks, the official inquiry into the war has heard.
Sir David Manning, Mr Blair’s former foreign policy adviser, said Mr Bush told the then prime minister there could be a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda in a telephone conversation on 14 September, 2001.
Sir David said that, throughout the period, Mr Blair had argued strongly in favour of trying to resolve the issue of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) through the United Nations.
“The British government’s view throughout this was disarmament. It was not regime change,” he said.
He told the inquiry the issue of Iraq arose in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 at the end of the telephone conversation between Mr Bush and Mr Blair. “He (Mr Bush] said that he thought there might be evidence that there was some connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda,” Sir David said.
“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.”
Mr Blair followed up the conversation with a letter stressing the need to focus on the situation in Afghanistan, where the 9/11 attacks originated.
But by the time Mr Blair went to visit Mr Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, the British were “very conscious that Iraq would be on the agenda”.
Realated: 911truthskipton.com
