Posted on 08/29/2011 7:43:28 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
George Bush and Tony Blair in April 2003. A letter shows they had agreed five months before to invade Iraq without a second UN resolution.
Britain and the US were planning to take action against Saddam Hussein without a second UN resolution five months before the invasion of Iraq, a newly released letter from Tony Blair's office shows.
A letter from Blair's private secretary reveals that "we and the US would take action" without a new resolution by the UN security council if UN weapons inspectors showed Saddam had clearly breached an earlier resolution. In that case, he "would not have a second chance".
That was the only way Britain could persuade the Bush administration to agree to a role for the UN and continuing work by UN weapons inspectors, the letter says.
Dated 17 October 2002, it was written by Matthew Rycroft to Mark Sedwill, private secretary to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw. "This letter is sensitive," Rycroft underlined. "It must be seen only by those with a real need to know its contents, and must not be copied further."
He sent it to a number of other senior officials, including Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador to the UN. There is no indication that it was seen by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, who at the time was advising that invading Iraq without a fresh UN resolution would be illegal.
Rycroft's letter referred to a Downing Street meeting on the Iraqi crisis attended by Straw, the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, and the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Sir Mike Boyce. Also present were Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell; his director of government relations, Sally Morgan; his director of communications, Alastair Campbell; and his chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Wonder if we got a UN letter for Lybia? Such pettiness.
Big deal. Are we STILL in that God forsaken country. I agree with people that say that Bush screwed up with the Iraq War. He should have gone in their bombed them back to 1500 BC and get the heck out of there. I don’t know what the heck he was thinking keeping us there for over 10 years.....Obama is worse....he needs to bomb the heck out of the place. We need to end this now but bombing it into kingdom come is the only way out now.
And? It was a plan. Paperwork. I seriously doubt even one tank was deployed.
And just what is wrong with that?
“And just what is wrong with that?”
My sentiments as well.
in the long term it strengthened the shia.
Seems like a moot point as they got more UN approval and congressional approval than O’barry did in Libya
We now need the consent of the UN?
To the people who wrote this article: We need the UN’s approval like we need a hole in the head.
I remember reading in the Guardian that Bush and Blair also planned World War II and faked the data to get their respective countries involved. Hitler was a pacifist. Neville Chamberlain was right.
Without a second..???
Besides the 30+ Saddam Hussein had not met or broke..
Yah, so .. ?
The important vote as far as we are concerned was the vote Bush obtained of the U.S. Congress.
Zero declared war on Libya without bothering to obtain the approval of the U.S. Congress, violating our constitution.
Neat trick by President Bush to, as you claim, keep us in Iraq for “over 10 years” when he was only in office for 8, and we didn’t invade until 2003. *rolls eyes*
Whatever.....it doesn’t matter. He put us in that war and screwed it up. There are tons of threads on here that back up my post.
Yeah, so? Why would they have had to wait for a SECOND resolution, anyway?
So freaking what, Bill Clinton already drafted a policy to take Saddam out. It was the policy of the USA before GW Bush was elected to remove Saddam from office.
I get it. Facts and truth don't matter to you.
In theory, it was the right thing to take Saddam out because he was a loose cannon. But is Iraq really better off without him? Saddam was a SOB but Christians were (relatively) safe under his rule.
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