Reply #18: 'RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war' - Sunday Times UK, May 29, 2005

[magellan]

The Sunday Times (UK)
May 29, 2005

'RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war'
Michael Smith

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the
allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued
gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.

snip

Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that “the US had already begun ‘spikes of activity’ to put pressure on the regime”.

snip

Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admitted this operation was designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks
that began the 1991 Gulf war.

more...http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article527701.ece