A Journey_ My Political Life Part 20

I doubt the sanctions would have been effective, even with these in place. But without them, there was no chance. As the discussion proceeded, several countries objected to the tougher provisions and they were dropped. In particular, the strong prohibitions on surrounding nations were taken out. As Kenneth Pollack wrote in his book on the subject, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, this left the policy neutered. He said there were seven preconditions for sanctions to work, and concluded that none of them would have happened.

No, right or wrong, we did it for the reasons given, and for the thinking that lay behind those reasons. So: what were they?

But for September 11, Iraq would not have happened. People sometimes take that as meaning I'm saying Iraq posed the same threat as Afghanistan, i.e. there was a link to al-Qaeda. I'm not. It is correct that some in the US system thought there was such a link. It is also correct that there was strong intelligence that al-Qaeda were allowed into Iraq by Saddam in mid-2002 (with severe consequences later) and that he was certainly prepared to support terrorism, as he did in paying money to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. But the a.s.sessment of the threat was not based on Saddam's active sponsors.h.i.+p of terrorism or terrorist groups.

(There is an interesting sidebar to this. It later emerged that al-Zarqawi, the deputy to bin Laden, had come to Iraq in May 2002, had had meetings with senior Iraqis and established a presence there in October 2002. This intelligence has not been withdrawn, by the way. Probably we should have paid more attention to its significance, but we were so keen not not to make a false claim about al-Qaeda and Saddam that we somewhat understated it, at least on the British side.) to make a false claim about al-Qaeda and Saddam that we somewhat understated it, at least on the British side.) The link with September 11 arose in this way. As I wrote earlier, the real shock of that attack in which 3,000 people died the worst single terrorist attack in the history of the world was that it indicated a mindset on al-Qaeda's part of unlimited destruction, i.e. if it could have been 30,000 or 300,000, the better from their perspective. This was not a targeted terror attack to achieve a definable and realisable political objective; it was a declaration of all-out war in pursuit of a religiously motivated objective. It was therefore of a different order from anything the world had faced before.

At the same time, the issue of WMD had grown. Again, now that history has been rewritten so as to impose the worst possible construct on the action taken, it seems almost as if the whole issue of WMD was a convenient invention to justify a decision already taken. In fact, the issue of proliferation and not just of nuclear but also of chemical and biological weapons was a source of growing anxiety even before September 11. The various conventions and treaties in force were conspicuously lacking in enforceability. The activities of A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist who brought Pakistan to nuclear status, were the subject of a vast amount of behind-the-scenes discussion, debate and concern in the intelligence community. His expertise was alleged to be for sale. We were pretty sure that some countries like Libya had active chemical or biological or nuclear programmes.

After September 11, the thinking was this: if these terrorist groups could acquire WMD capability, would they use it? On the evidence of September 11, yes. So how do we shut the trade down? How do we send a sufficiently clear and vivid signal to nations that are developing, or might develop, such capability to desist? How do we make it indisputable that continued defiance of the will of the international community will no longer be tolerated?

In this regard, there grew up a distinction that was neither helpful nor sensible. Often, and most of all in respect of Iraq, people would say: is it regime change you are after, or WMD? The true answer is that though in one sense these are separate questions, in another, of course, the two are connected. If, for example, Iran was a well-governed, democratic nation at ease with the world and was trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability, our att.i.tude would be very different. We would still have concerns and would still oppose it, but the context of risk and threat would be dramatically altered. And the point is if they were democratic, they probably wouldn't be seeking such capability. In other words, the appreciation of the danger is in part governed by the a.s.sessment of the regime. In a very profound sense it was in the nature of the Saddam regime that the ambitions for WMD were to be found, and the risks to be judged.

An example of this muddled thinking is to be found in the constant a.s.sertion that whereas the US had a policy of regime change, the UK had a policy to do with WMD. Therefore, it is said, we were on different sides of the argument and eventually the UK was pulled on to the US ground.

It is instructive to read the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 pa.s.sed by President Clinton. It was then that US policy became regime change, but it did so as the Act makes clear because of the WMD issue and Saddam's breach of UN resolutions. It wasn't to do with the moral case against Saddam; it was precisely to do with the WMD threat, and arose out of his defiance of the will of the international community.

Therefore, as the impact of September 11 reverberated around the world, and I as a leader contemplated the future potential for risk, the possibility of terrorists acquiring WMD was at the forefront of my mind.

It was true that, in certain respects, you could say that groups like al-Qaeda and regimes like that of Saddam were on opposite sides. Al-Qaeda was aiming at governments, and often those in the Arab world. Governments and especially dictators.h.i.+ps inherently dislike and distrust those who operate outside their influence. Fanaticism disturbs those who rule through order imposed with an iron fist. All of this was true, and remains true.

But I thought I could see something deeper, that at a certain level down beneath the surface there was an alliance taking shape between rogue states and terrorist groups. There was a common enemy: the West and its allies in the Arab and Muslim world. They shared a fear of Western culture, att.i.tudes and thought. Rightly, as the adoption of such thought was a material threat to them. There was a reason why Saddam of all the Arab leaders was so vociferous in opposition to the Saudi peace initiative, launched with much courage by the then Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002. Peace between Israel and Palestine was a threat to all those of an extremist hue, as it is today. It would mean coexistence. To groups like al-Qaeda, this was anathema. To regimes like Saddam's, it was a threat. A calm region, on a path to change, would not be an easy region for the likes of him or his sons.

This sharing of a common enemy was b.u.t.tressed by a common set of att.i.tudes: indifference to human life; the justification of ma.s.s killing to achieve ends abhorrent to most people; and a willingness to involve religion and the history of Islam in pursuit of such ends.

Would someone like Saddam want al-Qaeda to be powerful inside Iraq? Absolutely not. Would he be prepared to use them outside Iraq? Very possibly. Was there a real risk of proliferation, not only from Iraq but elsewhere, leaching into terrorist groups which would not be averse to using WMD? I certainly thought so.

Actually, I still think so. How many times did I hear, in respect of the Iranian government, people tell me that they, as s.h.i.+a, would never forge an alliance with Sunni groups in the Middle East? But where they conceive it serves a tactical purpose, they do because they share with those groups an interest in instability and a pa.s.sionate aversion to 'Western' values, which they rightly see as a long-term threat to their grip on power.

I also felt that the Middle East should be viewed as a region whose problems were ultimately interlinked and whose basic challenge was very simple: it was urgently in need of modernisation. It was an alarming melange of toxic ingredients: a wrong-headed view of the future; a narrative about Islam that was at best inadequate and at worst dangerous; and governed by regimes that could be allies of the West but be otherwise under immense internal strain. The leaders were often well intentioned, but presiding over systems that were inherently and deeply unsustainable. So the leaders would be open to the West, but their societies would not be. The discourse between leaders in that world and in ours could agree on the need to root out extremism, but the discourse on their streets would frequently represent that extremism.

This was exemplified by the att.i.tude to Israel. At leaders.h.i.+p level, though highly critical, and sometimes with good cause, of Israeli governments, the leaders basically wanted peace. What had been used as a rallying cry was now an irritant, and moreover a source of internal disaffection. Whereas at one time they wanted to use the issue, now they just wanted it solved, out of the way, off the agenda. And though back then Iran was perceived as less of a threat (a point they would make against the Iraq War, of which more later), there was even at that time a growing anxiety about Iranian influence and intention. They might dislike Israel, but they never feared it. Iran was a different order of worry altogether.

But, as even a cursory reading of local Arab press would indicate, at street level and among the educated commentariat, Israel was hated. It became a means of siphoning off the demand for change inside, by focusing political energy and commitment to an external cause, an injustice not just to Palestinians but to Muslims everywhere, a vital and persistent proof that the West was inimical to Islamic interests and to Islam itself.

As I have argued before, the most combustible combination politics knows is a people faced with a choice between an undemocratic government with the right idea, and a popular movement with the wrong one. That choice was there in abundance in the region and beyond. In the case of Saddam, this was almost inverted, which meant that his influence within the region was both poisonous and regressive to those who, like many of the Gulf states, wanted desperately to take their people on a journey to the future.

I looked at the region and felt the chances of a steady evolution were not good, and undoubtedly worse if Saddam remained in power. I never quite understood what the term 'neocon' really meant. To my bemus.e.m.e.nt, people would say: It means the imposition of democracy and freedom, which I thought odd as a characterisation of 'conservative'. But what it actually was, on a.n.a.lysis, was a view that evolution was impossible, that the region needed a fundamental reordering.

George Bush's State of the Union address in January 2002 was famous for its 'axis of evil' remark, linking Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea. It indicated that America was set on changing the world, not just leading it; and, as Afghanistan had shown, if necessary by force.

From my perspective, there were two drawbacks with the way the thesis was expressed by its supporters. The first was that (and this is less a criticism of George, who was always wary of the term) by wrapping it in partisan language 'neocon' it caused obvious problems for those from the progressive wing of politics, like me. Second, as I said in my September 2001 conference speech (and like a broken record thereafter), I believed that resolution of the Palestinian issue was of essential strategic importance to resolving this wider struggle. It hadn't caused the extremism, but resolving it would enormously transform the battle lines in defeating it.

However, leaving those problems aside, I had reached the same conclusion from a progressive standpoint as George had from a conservative one. The region needed a fundamental change. And this change was to be of a different character. In the 1980s we had armed Saddam as we had the mujahideen in Afghanistan, so as to thwart Iran in the one case and the Soviet Union in the other. It was a tactical move but a strategic mistake. This time, we would bring democracy and freedom. We would hand power to the people. We would help them build a better future. We would bring not a different set of masters, but the chance to be the masters, as our people are of us.

And hadn't we shown that such idealism was indeed achievable? In Afghanistan they were preparing for their first election, and the Taliban at that time were seemingly banished. In my first term, we had toppled Milosevic and changed the face of the Balkans. In Sierra Leone, we had saved and then secured democracy after the ravages of the diamond wars. We had the military might of America, not to say that of Britain and others. There was no way Saddam could resist: he would lose, or he would go voluntarily, in the knowledge that the alternative was involuntary removal.

So if there was a message to be sent about defiance of the international community, it should be sent to Iraq. If there was a regime whose detestable nature and penchant for conflict was clear, it was Saddam's. If there was a people in need of liberation, it was surely the Iraqi people.

It didn't turn out like that. Precisely because the roots of this wider struggle were deep, precisely because it was a visceral life-or-death battle between modernisers and reactionaries, precisely because what was and is at stake was no less than the whole future of Islam the nature of its faith, its narrative about itself, and its sense of its place in the twenty-first century precisely because of all this, there was no way the forces opposed to modernisation, and therefore to us, were going to relinquish their territory easily. They were going to fight as if their survival depended on it, because it did and it does. Let the values of democracy put down their own roots; let Western-funded development help the people prosper; get people right in the heart of the Arab world to see the benefits of a modern approach to work, leisure and life, and the narrative about the West as enemies, as infidels, would collapse and be seen as the self-serving nonsense that it is.

And they were going to fight using the one weapon almost impossible for any government, even one in a strong tradition of government, to handle: terrorism. The truth is that the insurgency among Sunni groups, albeit with some high-visibility terror attacks thrown in, was disruptive but manageable. What precipitated the deluge and very nearly broke the country apart were the al-Qaeda-led attacks of indiscriminate terror in markets, shopping malls and even mosques, killing large numbers of ordinary civilians and spreading fear and panic; complete with highly discriminate attacks focused specifically on s.h.i.+a places of wors.h.i.+p and holy sites and on the s.h.i.+a population itself that were designed to fan and did fan the flames of sectarianism.

On its own, even that could have been defeated. But what lent it devastating force was that terror in combination with the steady build-up of Iranian influence among extremist s.h.i.+a groups, and then finally with al-Qaeda, whose use of terror and then improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against UK, US and other forces, led to the draining of support for the whole venture. We may have begun fighting Saddam; we ended fighting the same forces of reaction we are fighting everywhere in the region, beyond it and even on our own streets.

In other words, left to itself, the country could have just about managed. What made the task all the harder, occasionally verging on the impossible, were the activities of the outside influences, h.e.l.l-bent on chaos and destruction. Both al-Qaeda and Iran knew what was at stake in Iraq. Neither was going to let the nation stabilise without a fight, and as our will weakened, theirs grew. It was then only through Prime Minister Nouri Maliki showing (frankly unantic.i.p.ated) leaders.h.i.+p qualities and the Bush decision to surge that the balance of will to win was s.h.i.+fted back towards the forces of democracy and modernisation.

It had been hard, harder than anyone foresaw. The problem, however, with the line that the aftermath 'proves' that the removal of Saddam was wrong is that it involves an acceptance of something that, on reflection, we should find unacceptable. We remove Saddam. The people are given the chance of a UN-sponsored democratic process and a large sum of cash to rebuild their country. They want to take it and show that desire in an election. However, the removal of Saddam provides the opportunity for terrorist and anti-democratic forces to disrupt the country. This causes a b.l.o.o.d.y war. Therefore, the argument goes, leave Saddam in place. Thus the Iraqis, a bit like the Afghans, are presented with a choice: the brutal dictator they have, or being overrun by terrorists who will impose their own dictators.h.i.+p. So they can have a secular tyranny or a religious one.

As one Iraqi put it to me on my visit to Baghdad shortly before leaving office: 'So you're saying [meaning the Western critics]: We can have Saddam or rule by terrorist; but we can't have what you have? Surely we had to defeat Saddam; now we must defeat terror. But there must be a better choice for our future.'

The trouble is that the enemy we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have discovered one very important facet of the modern Western psyche: we want our battles short and successful. If they turn out to be b.l.o.o.d.y, protracted and uncertain, our will weakens. In particular, the loss of our soldiers demoralises and depresses us. Instead of provoking feelings of anger, determination or even revenge, it arouses a sense of the pain not being worth it, of a battle that is too much, too heavy, too laden with grief. And of course in the media age of today, it is played out in real time, in real life and in real life, war has never, not from first to last, been anything other than horrible. Ironically, the last to lose heart are the warriors themselves, the soldiers who joined the army as volunteers and who want an army prepared to fight. But the public tires long before, emotionally exhausted and psychologically unnerved. The result in Iraq was that as time wore on, there was a fatal sagging of the will that was really only restored by the surge and the Iraqis' determination to avoid the abyss.

The fact is, in Iraq, there were two conflicts: a relatively short one to remove Saddam, and a prolonged one to rid the aftermath of the destabilising plague of terror. It was in that second conflict that horrendous numbers of casualties were suffered, both of innocent Muslim Iraqi civilians and of US, UK and other Allied soldiers. But to have conceded to such often externally inspired and guided terror would have been a disastrous setback for the wider struggle.

So the argument raged fiercely back then and rages fiercely today. History, as ever, will be the final judge. At this point, I don't seek agreement. I seek merely an understanding that the arguments for and against were and remain more balanced than conventional wisdom suggests.

This was not Suez, where in 1956 Britain and France, against America's wishes, sought to topple Na.s.ser and failed. It was not Vietnam, which was a battle fought against a genuine insurgency (though one clearly not universally supported in the country) and where the insurgents won.

Forgotten in all the inevitable controversy over Iraq was the impact on other regimes at the time of the action. In early 2003, Libya began its negotiations to come clean on its nuclear and chemical programmes and eventually yielded them up and destroyed them. In October 2003, Iran, at first shocked by the US action, came back to the negotiating table on its nuclear programme for the first time since August 2002. North Korea came back to the six-party talks demanded by President Bush. The activities of A. Q. Khan were the subject of radical action by the Pakistan government and finally shut down. Proliferators and purveyors of WMD material hastily drew in their horns. The adverse consequences of really hard-line American att.i.tudes are well known, but there were also important and benign consequences. People reckoned Bush was tough enough to do anything, and they took notice. As I knew from private conversations with leaders in the Arab world, their reaction at the time, whatever the public stance, was one of silent approbation for an America that appeared to brook no nonsense from anyone. As the conflict continued and the mood of their street turned, so that approbation changed; but they never wanted a weak US president. They knew their own neighbourhood. And a little bit of fear about what America might do was no bad thing.

The chronology of events leading up to March 2003 was marked by the steady build-up to conflict. The US mindset after September 11 had altered radically and fundamentally. The extremism within Islam, based on a perversion of its truth, had declared war on the US. Even more so than those like me on the outside, those inside the American administration were clear: we had to take a wholly new look at the world. States that harboured terrorists or succoured them were potential enemies, as were states engaged in WMD. The possibility of the two coming together terrorists and so-called 'rogue' states developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons was too great a risk to contemplate. In a little-noticed move at the 2002 G8, the key nations agreed billions of dollars to protect or eliminate sites of former Soviet states with WMD. Each nation agreed to undertake and did undertake comprehensive anti-terror legislation, tightened money-laundering rules that might be connected with trade in terror or WMD, and bore down on any radical groups fomenting extremism.

At the first meeting with George in February 2001 at Camp David, Iraq was raised in the context of the new sanctions resolution that I described earlier, but there was no great sense of urgency. George was set on building a strong right-wing power base in the US, capable of sustaining him through two terms, and was focused especially on education and tax reform. We got on well, but fairly gingerly. Actually, Cherie probably hit it off better with Laura Bush than I did with George at first. I liked Laura immediately modest, una.s.suming, but with obvious true strength just beneath the surface. It can't have been easy moving into such a powerful family, and Barbara must have made a formidable mother-in-law (though far more lovable than her public image sometimes suggested). Laura had that inner, quiet belief in herself that gave her a thick carapace of toughness for the ordeals that lay ahead.

George had a great sense of humour, was self-effacing and self-deprecatory in an attractive way, but the fact remained he was conservative and I was progressive. There weren't many social issues we seemed to agree on; and on climate change, we were poles apart, as it were.

It was not my first time at Camp David I had been there with Bill. But that made it odd too. Last time, Bill and I had been sitting out in the suns.h.i.+ne in February 1998 debating how the centre left could get itself out of its perennial inadequacy of short bursts of power in an otherwise steady line of conservative government. It was exactly the kind of stimulating, intellectual, conceptual conversation that Bill loved, and as ever I would learn constantly, adding my own a.n.a.lysis and always surprised and encouraged by how our thinking converged.

This was not George at all. By the way, this was not because he wasn't smart; he was very smart. One of the most ludicrous caricatures of George is that he was a dumb idiot who stumbled into the presidency. No one stumbles into that job, and the history of American presidential campaigns is littered with the political corpses of those who were supposed to be brilliant but who nonetheless failed because brilliance is not enough. No one who isn't clever could survive that ordeal of the nine-month election duel, which itself usually follows a couple of years of hard graft. It's the same with UK politics, for a different reason: PMQs. An idiot couldn't survive one session. To survive and hold your head up over a period of time let's say a year of being Opposition leader you have to be clever, significantly past a basic intellectual threshold, otherwise you will be eaten alive.

But to succeed in US politics, or that of the UK, you have to be more than clever. You have to be able to connect and you have to be able to articulate that connection in plain language. The plainness of the language then leads people to look past the brainpower involved. Reagan was clever. Thatcher was clever. And sometimes the very plainness touches something else: a simplicity that is the product of a decisive nature. Now that simplicity can be impulsive; or it can ignore the complexity of the issue; and it can, of course, sometimes lead to the wrong decision. But it isn't born of dumbness. And you can produce a clarity of decision and action that, in situations calling for such clarity, is both powerful and beneficial. There are leaders who agonise too much; who are forever weighing up; whose consideration of the options becomes an end in itself and a subst.i.tute for clarity of decision. Of course it's good to think before you act, but the thinking has to be of finite duration and the action must follow. This is true in and of itself, but it is also true because when leading a country, or indeed any organisation, failure to act is an action with consequence. Inaction is a decision to maintain the status quo. Maintenance of the status quo has its own result, and usually its own dynamic. So removing Saddam had enormous consequence. Failure to remove him would not have been free of consequence. We can debate the nature of such consequence and how profound it would have been, but unquestionably, there would have been one.

George had immense simplicity in how he saw the world. Right or wrong, it led to decisive leaders.h.i.+p. Now you may disagree strongly with the decisions, but the opposite also has its problems.

As we sat outside the main building at Camp David, on the balcony in the February sun, and chatted on a 'get to know you' basis, it was obvious he was a world away from Bill Clinton. But he was also tough and clear and knew exactly what he wanted.

The visit to Camp David had been a welcome break in my preparations for the 2001 election, which was shortly to be postponed by foot-and-mouth disease. I had come through a difficult patch following the fuel-duty protests, I was at least ten points ahead in the polls and feeling confident. I could tell he was dealing with me in expectation he would still be dealing with me a year later. So we both wanted to get on with each other.

Camp David is set high up in the woods around Catoctin Mountain Park in over 140 acres. It is a collection of log cabins, very much American-style and well done. The main building houses the president's eating place, a cinema (where, believe it or not, we watched Meet the Parents Meet the Parents), and various study and entertainment rooms. It is fully equipped. It has its ranch feel to it, but it can very fast transform itself into a theatre of action.

I liked it. There were plenty of grounds to walk around, paths that weaved in and out of the trees. The media were carefully kept outside and allowed in only for press conferences. There was a gym and a chapel, and the food was good. It was a great place to relax and to scheme, and is only a short helicopter ride from the White House lawn, so its attractions are manifest.

In the months that followed that visit whose chief news value was my choice of casual clothes, as usual not quite right, and an odd comment by George about us using the same brand of toothpaste I probably thought more about Iraq than he did.

Since the bombing raid on Baghdad in December 1998, there had been on/off military and diplomatic activity aimed at Saddam, though not with much success. Following my re-election in June 2001, there was a protracted discussion between the US, UK, French, Germans and Russians about the new sanctions regime to get Saddam to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq. There was an ongoing concern about Russian commercial interests. When Vladimir and I discussed sanctions at the July 2001 Genoa G8 summit, he joked he was all in favour of them, provided we compensated him for the $8 billion that Iraq owed Russia.

The US had plans for a repeat exercise of 1998 if Saddam refused to comply, but essentially the whole context was one of steady but not urgent diplomatic pressure, with myself as perhaps the staunchest advocate of strong action, though even I was not thinking in terms of Saddam's forcible removal.

In July 2001, I even wrote to President Khatami of Iran thanking him for his support for our draft resolution on Iraq. For some time I had been told that Khatami offered a realistic chance of remaking our relations.h.i.+p with Iran and bringing it back into the fold. I was sceptical but willing to try.

In August 2001, US and UK military commanders patrolling the no-fly zones in southern Iraq informed us that the threat to coalition aircraft had increased substantially, and at the very end of August, US F-16 planes were in action over Basra. But none of it made many news headlines.

With the attack on New York and Was.h.i.+ngton on September 11 2001, all of this changed. As I explained before, suddenly the whole nature of the security threat altered: from one that was low-level, to one that was of supreme significance; from one that could be dealt with in time, to one that was urgent, immediate, pressing and dominant.

At a stroke, the American att.i.tude s.h.i.+fted. Saddam had been an unwelcome reminder of battles past, a foe that we had beaten but left in place, to the disgruntlement of many. But he had not been perceived of as a threat. Now it was not so much that the direct threat increased, but he became bound up in the US belief that so shocking had been the attack, so serious had been its implications, that the world had to be remade. Countries whose governments were once disliked but tolerated became, overnight, potential enemies, to be confronted, made to change att.i.tude, or made to change government.

Above all, there was a sense of an emergency. In this time, the failure to act was indeed an action with its own consequence and that consequence might be profoundly adverse. At that moment, the fear of history's judgement was not the fear that came with action, but with inaction. How to change the world was a tough challenge to answer; not to answer it, to be paralysed in indecision, was deemed the greater risk, by a large margin.

The immediate question was how to deal with bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but it was obvious that the US was limbering up on the wider issues to do with WMD. In November 2001, President Bush issued a stark general warning to those governments developing WMD; and to Iraq in particular, to let inspectors back in. A cross-party group of senators reminded George in a strongly worded letter in early December 2001, calling for the removal of Saddam, that US policy was regime change.

In January 2002, under pressure, Saddam began the process of reopening negotiations with the UN over weapons inspectors. But his compliance with UN resolutions had been minimal, as the following table compiled for the PLP for discussion at a Cabinet meeting in July 2002 shows.

Table of requirements that Iraq has to meet under various UN Security Council resolutions, and the regime's record of compliance.

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Of course, as ever, as the conspiracy theories abound in this area, it is a.s.sumed that the US took a decision to remove Saddam by military force in late 2001, and from then on, war was inevitable. It wasn't. And it's just not how politics works. Or human beings. And in the end human beings take political decisions.

What had happened, as I say, was that the US att.i.tude to risk had been turned upside down. Iraq was now definitely on the agenda. There was a predisposition to believe that Saddam was incorrigible. There was the certainty that he had an ongoing WMD programme. There was a belief that the world would be better off with him out of power. All that is for sure. It was still a long way off a decision. Instead of the tortuous and transparently insincere process he engaged in, had Saddam done what Gaddafi had the sense to do in Libya, the issue may have been resolved. If he had thrown his doors open, condemned instead of supported the attack of September 11, made it clear that he understood the rules of the game had fundamentally altered, then he would have found an open mind on the other side of his open door. But then probably he wouldn't have been Saddam.

The point is: the decision to confront Saddam flowed in the US mind from September 11; but the confrontation could in theory have remained and been successful as a diplomatic exercise.

I know because I was talking to George throughout. He may have thought action at some point was necessary, and towards the end of 2002 it all became a lot clearer to him. But in those early and middle months of 2002, it wasn't like that. And, as I will recount, even late in 2002 and early 2003, we could still have avoided a conflict. Of course, now people point to the fact there was military planning as showing that the diplomacy was all a show. Such planning was inevitable and right, not because war was inevitable but because it was an option and that option had to be planned for.

The first time we got to grips with it properly was on my visit to Crawford, George's ranch in Texas, in April 2002. It is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, 1,600 acres with a house and guest house and various outbuildings. As usual, I turned up mob-handed, with Grandma and Leo in tow. It was all very odd. Cherie used to like the family to travel with me, but frankly when I was working, I preferred to be on my own and undistracted, able to concentrate entirely on the matter in hand, not having to worry about Leo feeling bored, Grandma complaining or making sure everyone got on together! So I was never at my best on these mixed business/social occasions, alternately irritable and intense.

However, George and Laura made us incredibly welcome, far beyond normal host duty. The weather, unbelievably and to my chagrin, was quite cold. I had a.s.sumed Texas was pretty much suns.h.i.+ne all year round (wrong, I know) and had been looking forward to it after the British winter. It was also rare for me to give up a weekend at home. I tried to keep those free of official functions unless absolutely necessary. However, this was an exception and I figured that the best way to get inside George's mind on this was to do it out of Was.h.i.+ngton or even Camp David.

From my standpoint, by this time I had resolved in my own mind that removing Saddam would do the world, and most particularly the Iraqi people, a service. Though I knew regime change could not be our policy, I viewed a change with enthusiasm, not dismay. In my Chicago speech of 1999, I had enunciated the new doctrine of a 'responsibility to protect', i.e. that a government could not be free grossly to oppress and brutalise its citizens. I had put it into effect in Kosovo and Sierra Leone.

That said, because of the difficulties such an act required, because war should be the last not the first resort, I had come to a firm conclusion that we could only do it on the basis of non-compliance with UN resolutions. Tyrant though he was, Saddam could not be removed on the basis of tyranny alone.

In later times another myth came to light, based on observations by the then UK amba.s.sador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer. He alleged that while at Crawford, I had pledged 'in blood' that I would support America, had signed up for regime change and then articulated it in a speech in Texas the day after Crawford, for George Bush Snr.

Actually, he was never present at the Bush meeting; wasn't even in the same building; I made no such commitment in fact I emphasised the UN route; and my speech in Texas was entirely consistent with my other public p.r.o.nouncements.

But there it is the myth, once given birth to, becomes the reality.

However, I was clear about two things. The first was that Saddam had to be made to conform to the UN resolutions, that the years of obstruction and non-cooperation had to end. The second was that Britain had to remain, as a country, 'shoulder to shoulder' with America. This is not as crude or unthinking a policy as it sounds. It didn't mean we sacrificed our interest to theirs; or subcontracted out our foreign policy. It meant that the alliance between our two nations was a vital strategic interest and, as far as I was concerned, a vital strategic a.s.set for Britain.

It implied we saw attacks on the US as attacks on us, which I did. It argued for an att.i.tude that did see us genuinely as at war, together, with a common interest in a successful outcome. I believed then, as I do now, that the US could not afford to lose this battle, that our job as an ally who faced a common threat should be to be with them in their hour of need. I know all this can be made to sound corny or even, as some would have it, self-deceiving in terms of our effect on US decision-making. I was well aware that ultimately the US would take its own decisions in its own interests. But I was also aware that in the new world taking shape around us, Britain and Europe were going to face a much more uncertain future without America. As the defeat of Communism showed and let's be clear, without America, it would not have been defeated our alliance with the US mattered. My experience in needing Bill Clinton to act on Kosovo, which he did and which arguably saved the Balkans, had shown that we had recent and not merely historical reasons for knowing our need of America. So when they had need of us, were we really going to refuse; or, even worse, hope they succeeded but could do it without us? I reflected and felt the weight of an alliance and its history, not oppressively but insistently, a call to duty, a call to act, a call to be at their side, not distant from it, when they felt imperilled.

At the press conference in the Crawford school library, with the flags of the US and UK behind us, we delivered a strong message. It was basically: change the regime att.i.tude on WMD inspections, or face the prospect of changing regime.

Behind closed doors, however, our talk was more nuanced. We shared the a.n.a.lysis about the nature of the Saddam government, its risk to security and also the wider problem of the region. My concern then and subsequently was to locate the question of Saddam in the broader context of the Middle East as a region in transition. Even then, though less clearly than today, I saw the disparate issues as essentially part of the same picture. Therefore I made a major part of my pitch to George the issue of the IsraelPalestine peace process. To me this was the indispensable soft-power component to give equilibrium to the hard power that was necessary if Saddam were to be removed.

That process was in a mess. Following the intifada of 2000, there had been a terrible pa.s.sage of events with Palestinians engaged in terrorist attacks and severe Israeli retaliation resulting in a vastly increased weight of occupation. The process so near to breakthrough (or so it seemed) at the tail end of the Clinton administration was now in total disrepair. Patching it up and putting it back on track was, for me, utterly crucial to creating the conditions in which the tougher, harder measures could be taken without a revolt on the Arab streets and upset across the Muslim world. Already, just six months after the atrocity of September 11, the appet.i.te for action was waning and enthusiasm for any sort of military confrontation minimal, to say the least.

Days before leaving for Crawford, I had had a meeting at Chequers with senior army officers. The meeting was not specifically in preparation for Crawford, but to kick around the basic questions about what military action might entail. There had been discussion about whether our aim was focused on WMD or regime change. I had emphasised that the two were linked, and also that it was hard at this point to say that the nature of the WMD threat specific to Iraq had changed demonstrably in the last few years. It was the a.s.sessment of risk that had.

The new Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Mike Boyce, a submariner and former navy chief, and Sir Anthony Pigott, a general who had studied the military options, gave a presentation. They warned it could be a b.l.o.o.d.y fight and take a long time to remove Saddam. The US were engaged in preliminary planning, but it was hard to read where they were going with it. We needed to get alongside that planning and be part of it. Of course, as ever, this presented a dilemma: if you wanted to be part of the planning, you had to be, at least in principle, open to being part of the action. Early on, because I could see that this might have to end with Saddam's forcible removal, I resolved to be part of the planning. From around April, we were then fairly closely involved even in the early stages of US thinking.

None of this meant that war was certain. It wasn't and indeed a constant part of the interaction between George and myself through those months, probably up to around November, was acute anxiety that since we were planning for the possible, that meant, in the media mind, it was inevitable. We had the basic concepts ironed out: Saddam had to comply with UN resolutions and let the inspectors back in; he couldn't, on this occasion, be allowed to mess about his compliance had to be total; and if he refused, we were going to be in a position where we were capable of removing him. So the diplomacy and the planning proceeded along separate but plainly at certain points connected tracks.

It made domestic politics, however, highly uncomfortable. Naturally people were reading the reports, a.s.suming everything was decided and taking positions accordingly. If we said war was not agreed, they asked if we were planning; if we accepted we were doing some form of planning, that meant war was indeed therefore agreed. The notion of a contingency was too subtle. And, to be fair, many of the noises emanating from parts of the US system did suggest that there was only one direction in which policy should go.

We flew back from Crawford with some really tough thinking to do. I made a statement on the Middle East peace process, following George's commitment to me to re-engage with it. We had the Budget to get settled, on which I was having meetings with Gordon, on the whole reasonably satisfactorily. We had finally agreed a policy on the rise in National Insurance tax to pay for the NHS.

Around this time, also, and for the first time since we had been in government, relations with the press finally really soured. The frustration of the right wing at the state of the Tory Party was boiling over into ever more personal and vitriolic a.s.saults on me, any pa.s.sing minister who looked vulnerable and on those who worked closely with me.

We had the extraordinary saga of the Queen Mother's funeral. The Queen Mum had died at the ripe old age of 101. The nation was generally sad at her pa.s.sing. She had been such a familiar and solid British figure over the decades, much loved and remembered for her stoicism and grit during the war, when she insisted on staying in London through the Blitz.

The arrangements for a big state event such as this are always complicated. She was going to lie in state in Westminster Hall for a week, before the actual funeral service. From my office, Clare Sumner, a civil servant and a lovely, capable and very straight young woman, got in touch with Black Rod, a retired general, about the protocol. For some reason unbeknown to me, there had been an issue over what I did or where I stood or some such (I can't even recall the detail it was so trivial), which had been resolved without any problem, so Clare thought, and she agreed to do exactly as Black Rod wanted. I never even knew of the issue until afterwards.

The Telegraph Telegraph, Spectator Spectator and the and the Mail Mail on Sunday on Sunday then ran stories about how I and Alastair (who had known absolutely nothing of it either) had interfered with the Queen Mother's funeral, caused consternation and distress, how disrespectful to muscle in, etc. All complete rubbish. For once, and stupidly, I took it seriously and we decided to go to the Press Complaints Commission. It was the last time I made that mistake. To be fair, the person who was the full-time executive was perfectly sensible, but of course the PCC panel was made up of the editors. Then we were told that the source was very close to Black Rod. So the PCC felt they couldn't adjudicate. But it left a bitter taste. then ran stories about how I and Alastair (who had known absolutely nothing of it either) had interfered with the Queen Mother's funeral, caused consternation and distress, how disrespectful to muscle in, etc. All complete rubbish. For once, and stupidly, I took it seriously and we decided to go to the Press Complaints Commission. It was the last time I made that mistake. To be fair, the person who was the full-time executive was perfectly sensible, but of course the PCC panel was made up of the editors. Then we were told that the source was very close to Black Rod. So the PCC felt they couldn't adjudicate. But it left a bitter taste.

Then Steve Byers, who had been a good minister, decided to resign. He had endured weeks of constant battering, being called a liar and a cheat and a villain and the rest, over his refusal to sack his press aide Jo Moore (who had sent an email on September 11 saying it was a good time to 'bury' bad news), and various issues to do with the railways. There was absolutely no justification for his resignation but I could tell he had had enough. You have to be superhuman or maybe subhuman to endure it all, with your family reading it and your friends pitying and your enemies crowing, and I could tell he was just shot through. The reshuffle gave me a chance to bring in David Miliband as a minister, barely a year after his election as an MP.

We had a Cabinet in June at which John Prescott launched a scathing attack on Peter Mandelson and others who, he said, were upsetting the balance between New Labour and Old. I hit back pretty hard and said it was a difficult time but that's what government's like and we couldn't, as I think I said at the time, 'wet our knickers' every time we hit a rough period.

Anyway, you get the picture: the usual mix of the historic, the transient and the trivial. And throughout, now an insistent and pervasive backdrop, Iraq and what we were going to do about it.

Iraq will be looked back on for many reasons, but one interesting study is around the fact that it was the first war fought on the ground in the new era of transparency and twenty-four-hour media. Literally every day, stories would appear moving the debate this way and that and in line with developing patterns of reporting, always hardening speculation into fact. At times we would not be sure whether we were driving the agenda or being driven by it. On holiday in France in August 2002, I took a call from George, who was equally frustrated by the fact that everyone a.s.sumed we had made up our mind and that the march to war was inexorable.

However, in one sense it was not surprising that they felt this way. At a meeting just before the holiday towards the end of July, Mike Boyce made it pretty clear that he thought the US had decided on it, bar a real change of heart by Saddam. Geoff Hoon, then Defence Secretary, described the options basically for a generated start, i.e. slow build-up; or a running start, i.e. fast-moving; and also as to where the troops would move in, at that time the preference being for them to come in from the north. So it's impossible not to read the accounts of the meetings during that time without an a.s.sumption of a decision already taken.

But here is the difference between everyone else and the final decision-taker. Everyone else can debate and a.s.sume; only one person decides. I knew at that moment that George had not decided. He had, as I say, concluded a conceptual framework in which the pivotal concept was that Saddam had to come fully into compliance and disarm, but he had taken no final position on the way to make him.

In late July, I sent George another personal, private note setting out the case for going the UN route; and stressing again the Middle East peace process. David Manning, my foreign affairs adviser, went to Was.h.i.+ngton, talked it through with Condoleezza Rice and then direct with the president. I followed up with another call.

The debate around the UN within the administration was pretty fierce. We agreed to meet after the summer break.

I reflected with the closest team on the different strands of the challenge. If it came to war, how did we do it with least bloodshed? That was the military question. On the basis that we did it, how did we maximise the coalition? That was the UN question. And how did we do it without provoking uproar across the Middle East? That was the Arab question.

When I returned from holiday I did a press conference in Sedgefield. It was strange how I always relaxed there, even in the most unrelaxing moments. I also had my lines clear. I was going to be very tough: we had to deal with Saddam; it was right to do it; we had to send an unvarnished and plain message on WMD to the world.

One other rather fateful decision was taken at that time. Reasonably enough, people wanted to see the evidence on Saddam and WMD. This evidence was contained in intelligence. It was not practice, for obvious reasons, to disclose intelligence. We decided we had to do it. Many times afterwards, I regretted this decision. The 'dossier', as it was called, later became the subject of the most vicious recrimination and condemnation. In reality, it was done because we could see no way of refusing it, given the clamour for it. The very unprecedented nature of it was, however, part of the problem. Both opponents and supporters of action against Saddam were urging us to share with the public the intelligence we had.

Two things should be said in retrospect about the dossier. First, contrary to ex post facto ex post facto wisdom, it was considered at the time September 2002 dull, and not containing anything new. The infamous forty-five-minutes claim was taken up by some of the media on the day but not referred to afterwards, and was not even mentioned by me at any time in the future, including in the crucial parliamentary debate on 18 March 2003, which authorised military action. Of the 40,000 written parliamentary questions between September 2002 and the end of May 2003 when the BBC made their broadcast about it, only two asked about the forty-five-minutes issue. Of the 5,000 oral questions, none ever mentioned it. It was not discussed by anyone in the entire debate of 18 March 2003. So the idea we went to war because of this claim is truly fanciful. wisdom, it was considered at the time September 2002 dull, and not containing anything new. The infamous forty-five-minutes claim was taken up by some of the media on the day but not referred to afterwards, and was not even mentioned by me at any time in the future, including in the crucial parliamentary debate on 18 March 2003, which authorised military action. Of the 40,000 written parliamentary questions between September 2002 and the end of May 2003 when the BBC made their broadcast about it, only two asked about the forty-five-minutes issue. Of the 5,000 oral questions, none ever mentioned it. It was not discussed by anyone in the entire debate of 18 March 2003. So the idea we went to war because of this claim is truly fanciful.

Second, it would have been far better to have just published the JIC reports, i.e. the intelligence reports based on the raw material. We debated this, but understandably the intelligence services felt this was a breach of tradition too far. But had we done so, much grief as well as many completely unfounded allegations about lying, making up the intelligence, etc. would have been avoided. Or maybe not ...