LONDON: A series of released records in the UK have revealed that President George W. Bush viewed the Iraq war as a \u201ccrusade.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cabinet Office papers made public on Tuesday show Bush considered the US \u201cGod\u2019s chosen nation\u201d tasked with ridding the world of \u201cevil-doers,\u201d including Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n
Sir Christopher Meyer, the UK\u2019s ambassador to Washington, wrote in December 2002 in a diplomatic cable to Whitehall: \u201cMore than anything else, he (Bush) fears another catastrophic terrorist attack on the homeland, especially one with an Iraqi connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cHis view of the world is Manichean. He sees his mission as ridding it of evil-doers. He believes American values should be universal values. He finds the Europeans\u2019 differentiation between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein self-serving.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is strongly allergic to Europeans collectively. Anyone who has sat round a dinner table with low-church Southerners will find these sentiments instantly recognisable.\u201d<\/p>\n
In January 2023, Sir Tony Blair met with Bush in the US to urge him to use diplomacy, but Sir Christopher wrote Jan. 29: \u201cIt is politically impossible for Bush to back down from going to war in Iraq this spring, absent Saddam\u2019s surrender or disappearance from the scene.\u201d <\/p>\n
On Jan. 30, Sir David Manning, a UK foreign policy adviser, told Sir Tony to warn Bush that a UN resolution was \u201cpolitically essential for the UK, and almost certainly legally essential as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sir David told Condoleezza Rice, Bush\u2019s secretary of state, that an invasion of Iraq without one could bring down the Labour government, and that \u201cthe US must not promote regime change in Baghdad at the price of regime change in London.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added in a message to Sir Tony: \u201cI said that Bush could afford to gamble. He wanted a second resolution but it was not crucial to him. He already had congressional authority to act unilaterally. This was quite different from the situation you were facing.<\/p>\n
\u201cCondi acknowledged this but said that there came a point in any poker game when you had to show your cards. I said this was fine for Bush. He would still be at the table if he showed his cards and lost. You would not.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cables also reveal other aspects of Sir Tony\u2019s time in office, including a birthday message from Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2001.<\/p>\n
\u201cDear Tony,\u201d the message read, \u201caccept my sincere congratulations on your birthday and heartfelt wishes of good health, happiness, success and well being to you and your family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith great warmth I recollect our last meeting in Stockholm, I am convinced that regular contacts between us will further facilitate the development of Russian-British relations, strengthening international security and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other revelations include a thorny diplomatic incident, when former French President Jacques Chirac had spoken in private to Sir Tony about Clare Short, the international development secretary, to complain she was \u201cviscerally anti-French and insupportable.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an effort to improve relations with Chirac, UK officials also considered purchasing a map of Afghanistan for Chirac denoting British military failures in the country for \u201ca laugh\u201d for his birthday in November 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: A series of released records in the UK have revealed that President George W. Bush viewed the Iraq war as a \u201ccrusade.\u201d Cabinet Office papers made public on Tuesday show Bush considered the US \u201cGod\u2019s chosen nation\u201d tasked with ridding the world of \u201cevil-doers,\u201d including Saddam Hussein. Sir Christopher Meyer, the UK\u2019s ambassador to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84153,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84135\/revisions\/84153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}