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Blair received a number of warnings from top advisers just before the summit. Peter Ricketts, the British government’s national security adviser, wrote to Blair that scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda was “so far frankly unconvincing”.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-war-bush-blair-secret-memo-reveal-plans-topple-saddam

By David Hearst

George W Bush told Tony Blair he did not know who would replace Saddam Hussein in Iraq when they toppled him and that he “did not much care”, according to an explosive top secret account of the meeting seen by Middle East Eye.

The former US president was blithe about the consequences of launching an invasion at a crucial meeting with the British prime minister at his Texas ranch in 2002, almost a year before the war was launched.

“He didn’t know who would take Saddam’s place if and when we toppled him. But he didn’t much care. He was working on the assumption that anyone would be an improvement,” the British memo, written by Blair’s top foreign policy adviser at the time, reads.

Bush believed – but the memo says he would not say publicly – that a “moderate secular regime” in post-Saddam Iraq would have a favourable impact both on Saudi Arabia – a close US ally – and Iran.

He had said it was essential to ensure that acting against Saddam would enhance rather than diminish regional stability. Bush “had therefore reassured the Turks that there was no question of the break-up of Iraq and the emergence of a Kurdish state”.

The memo also reveals how as early as April 2002, more than eight months before United Nations weapons inspectors went into Iraq, Blair was aware that they might have to “adjust their approach” should Saddam give them free rein.

This is believed to be the first reference to a strategy which ended with the creation of the infamous “dodgy dossier” of concocted intelligence making the case for war, key details of which were later admitted to be false.

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