# Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq war **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 4, 2004, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-and-blair-made-secret-pact-for-iraq-war/238251 "2004-04-04T23:33:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![verybdog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/49beb7/32.png) [@verybdog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/verybdog)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2004, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-and-blair-made-secret-pact-for-iraq-war/238251/1 "2004-04-04T23:33:59Z")
Folks, what would this do to Bush’s next poll ratings? > **[Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq war](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/apr/04/iraq.iraq)** > > · Decision came nine days after 9/11 · Ex-ambassador reveals discussion > [@](#): > > President George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001. > > According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, who was at the dinner when Blair became the first foreign leader to visit America after 11 September, Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the war on terror’s initial goal - dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. > > Bush, claims Meyer, replied by saying: ‘I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.’ Regime change was already US policy. > > It was clear, Meyer says, ‘that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn’t be to discuss smarter sanctions’. Elsewhere in his interview, Meyer says Blair always believed it was unlikely that Saddam would be removed from power or give up his weapons of mass destruction without a war. > > Faced with this prospect of a further war, he adds, Blair ‘said nothing to demur’. > > Details of this extraordinary conversation will be published this week in a 25,000-word article on the path to war with Iraq in the May issue of the American magazine Vanity Fair. It provides new corroboration of the claims made last month in a book by Bush’s former counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, that Bush was ‘obsessed’ with Iraq as his principal target after 9/11. ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2004, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-and-blair-made-secret-pact-for-iraq-war/238251/2 "2004-04-04T23:52:45Z")
> [@verybdog](#): > > Folks, what would this do to Bush’s next poll ratings? Not much, I imagine. Anyone sane enough to comprehend the issue has long since figured out that Bush was going into Iraq no matter what. Some people care, some people don’t, some people want him impeached, some want him on Mt Rushmore, but the people who still think there was any other way out are a pretty fringe group on either side. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-and-blair-made-secret-pact-for-iraq-war/238251/3 "2004-04-05T00:14:20Z")
Spanish support by Aznar is difficult to explain as it is unusual in the pro-European policies Spain had been following. There is a theory going around which, if true, would explain a lot of things. It goes like this: When Morocco took the islet of Perejil, Spain, asked France, Germany, UK, etc for diplomatic support and hard words, even threats, against Morrocco but they refused. Spain then turned to the USA and a pact was made (Colin Powell) that the USA would pressure (command is a better word) Morrocco to behave and, in exchange, Spain would support the USA in the matter of Iraq. That was the secret pact. In an operation which was agreed by all parties beforehand, Spain “reconquered” the islet so that Morroccan honor was saved. If this is true, since it happened a few months before the Iraqi situation came to a head, it seems the USA, if it had not made the decision to invade, at least was considering it a very likely scenario. The irony, of course, is that, if this is true, France not backing Spain against Morrocco (with whom it has great influence) cost it Spain’s alignment with the USA in Iraq. Had France played its cards right, Spain later would have been indebted to France and would have aligned itself with France and against the USA. It was France’s mistake which configured the latter alignment of Spain against the position of France. That Spain went to war in Iraq in exchange for American pressure on Morrocco in the matter of that islet is mind-boggling because the price is disproportionate to what it got. It may well be that Aznar did not think at the time that the matter of Iraq would escalate so he was, in fact, tricked if the decision was already made to invade. ---
**Author:** ![Rashak\_Mani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ea666f/32.png) [@Rashak\_Mani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rashak_Mani)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-and-blair-made-secret-pact-for-iraq-war/238251/4 "2004-04-05T02:53:40Z")
With so much dirt being uncovered about Bush and his ratings are better than Kerry… I doubt this will matter much. Seems a large amount of US voters don’t read or listen to news. ---
**Author:** ![London\_Calling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-and-blair-made-secret-pact-for-iraq-war/238251/5 "2004-04-05T04:00:39Z")
Given that at the SotU Address in Jan 2002 – with Blair sitting in the gallery – Bush delivered his unequivocal ‘Axis of Evil’ policy statement, a three-month lead-in (to that official announcement) is hardly unreasonable. So sure ‘regime change’ was emerging policy immediately post-9/11. I’d guess at that point Blair, at least, hoped that change might come either some other way or under the auspices of the UN – crystal balls they didn’t have., though. Doesn’t affect the polls in any way, imho.