January 17, 2010
Courtesy Of The Sunday Times Online
A “SECRET and personal” letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair’s plans for Iraq a year before war started.
The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed.
It was sent 10 days before Blair met George Bush, then the US president, in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. The document clearly implies that Blair was already planning for military action even though he continued to insist to the British public for almost another year that no decision had been made.
The letter will be a key piece of evidence at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war when it questions Straw this week.
The document begins in a way that now appears eerily prophetic: “The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few ... there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] for any military action against Iraq.”
Straw said Iraq posed no greater threat to the UK than it had done previously. The letter said there was “no credible evidence” linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda and that the “threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September”.
Implying Blair was already seeking an excuse for war, it warned of two legal “elephant traps”. It states “regime change per se is no justification for military action” and “the weight of legal advice here is that a fresh [UN] mandate may well be required”.
The letter went on to question the very objective of military action. Straw warned Blair: “We have also to answer the big question — what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything.”
Straw said there was “no certainty that the replacement regime will be better” than that of Saddam Hussein.
Despite this warning a year ahead of the war, the planning by Blair and other coalition leaders for the aftermath of war was dismal. Iraq descended into bloody chaos that cost more lives than the war itself.
Straw later wrote a further secret memo in early 2003 again doubting that the case for war had been made.
The release of Straw’s letter will pile further pressure on Blair ahead of the former prime minister giving evidence to the inquiry sometime between January 25 and February 5.
The issue of the war remains highly sensitive among the public. A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times this weekend shows that 52% of people believe Blair deliberately misled the country over the war. Almost one in four — 23% — think he should be tried as a war criminal.
The inquiry burst into life last week during tense questioning of Alastair Campbell. Blair’s former communications director rejected evidence from Sir Christopher Meyer, former UK ambassador in Washington, that Blair agreed to regime change at the Crawford summit. Campbell claimed the agreement came later in a series of private letters to Bush.
Philippe Sands QC, an expert on the legality of the war, said: “Mr Campbell sought to persuade Chilcot that there was no early decision [on war]: the Straw letter is plainly inconsistent with Mr Campbell’s narrative.”
In addition, a Cabinet Office briefing paper, previously leaked to The Sunday Times, contradicts Campbell’s evidence.
The briefing paper states: “When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change.”
The YouGov poll shows that 49% of people believe Campbell did not tell the truth about the Iraq war at the time and is still not telling the truth, while 31% think he told the truth as he saw it at the time.
Other witnesses appearing before the Chilcot inquiry next week include Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, and Geoff Hoon, the former defence secretary. Hoon is expected to be asked about his contribution to a war cabinet meeting in July 2002.
The minutes of the meeting were leaked to The Sunday Times in May 2005 and have since become widely known as “the Downing Street memo”. It recorded that “military action was now seen as inevitable in Washington” and that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”.
The memo also refers to Hoon saying that “spikes of activity” had already begun. These were attacks on Iraqi military installations in preparation for the ground invasion. The RAF took part in them.
Additional reporting: Richard Woods
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