Reply #12: More quotes

[allemand]

"'Failure is not an option, but it doesn't mean they will avoid it'
By Michael Smith

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Any British action had to be "narrated with reference to the international rule of law", Mr Straw insisted. He warned that his legal advisers were telling him that it would almost certainly need a fresh UN mandate to make it legal, a mandate the Americans didn't feel was necessary and the rest of the Security Council was unlikely to give. He questioned the rationale behind the whole enterprise. Whatever the allies put in Saddam's place, it was unlikely to be much better. But the problem for Mr Blair was that he knew there was no stopping the Americans. That much was clear from the Secret UK Eyes Only "options paper" on Iraq given to him on Friday, March 8, 2002.

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Mr Bush had reportedly told one aide: "F*** Saddam. We're taking him out". It no longer seemed to be a question of if; all the discussion was of how soon, with increasing talk of an invasion that autumn when conditions on the ground in Iraq would be ideal.

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Mr Wolfowitz was the most hard-line of those within the administration advocating an attack on Iraq, one of the key players the British would have to win over if they were to have a chance of persuading the Americans to wait for the UN backing Mr Blair needed to sell another American war to Britain.

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Peter Ricketts, his policy director, offered the Foreign Secretary some advice in a confidential memo dated Friday, March 22. "By sharing Bush's broad objective, the Prime Minister can help shape how it is defined, and the approach to achieving it," he said.
"In the process, he can bring home to Bush some of the realities which will be less evident from Washington. He can help Bush make good decisions by telling him things his own machine probably isn't.""

There are many more interesting quotes in the article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/18/nwar118.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/18/ixnewstop.html

"The mandarins propose, but Blair carries the can

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The confidential documents published by The Telegraph today paint a fascinating picture of British officials wrestling, a year before the invasion of Iraq, with the fact that George W Bush is set on removing Saddam Hussein from power as the first step in destroying the "axis of evil".

There is a certain amount of received mandarinate opinion. Sir Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to Washington, points to the critical importance of reviving the Middle East peace process as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy. An option paper prepared by the Cabinet Office loftily dismisses Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Council, as "a Shia and convicted fraudster, popular on Capitol Hill".

Most notable, in the light of events, is the same paper's prescription for a future Iraqi administration: "This would be Sunni-led but, within a federal structure, the Kurds would be guaranteed autonomy and the Shia fair access to government."

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The received wisdom of the bureaucracy is summarised by Mr Straw's memo to the Prime Minister before his April 2002 summit with Mr Bush in Texas. Warning that rewards from the meeting would be few, the Foreign Secretary reviews the political and legal difficulties of invading Iraq and points, presciently, to the glaring absence of plans for the country once Saddam is gone."

http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/09/18/dl1801.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/09/18/ixopinion.html