Blair: How British Officials Conspired to Do Me Down

By Mick Smith, Times

Tony Blair attempted, in an interview with the BBC's Today programme, to dismiss the claim that he had already agreed to go to war when the infamous "Downing Street Memo" meeting took place in July 2002 as “conspiracy theory”. Even by his pathetic standards this is a novel excuse. But just in case anyone is gulled into believing him, here is an extract from what was to my mind the most important of the eight memos. It was a Cabinet Office briefing paper, dated 21 July 2002 prepared for a key meeting of Blair's war cabinet, which was to take place at 10 Downing St two days later. It was the minutes of that meeting which included the infamous statement by Sir Richard Dearlove, the then head of MI6, that the intelligence was being “fixed around the policy” in Washington.

The Cabinet Office briefing paper revealed that Blair and Bush had agreed to invade Iraq at the Crawford summit on 6/7 April 2002, six months before the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1441, which the British Prime Minister said legalised the war, and five months before Congress authorised military action.

“When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change.”

This was arguably the most important point made in any of the Downing Street Memos and although it was the Sunday Times lead when we broke the story, its significance was largely missed by other parts of the UK and US media. Even those who followed up the story said the memos showed that Blair and Bush had agreed to go to war in July. If you still believe that read the quote in blue again.

That agreement meant that ministers had little choice but to find a way to "create the conditions in which we could legally support military action", by securing a UN ultimatum to Iraq to give up his weapons, the Cabinet Office briefing paper said.

You can read the briefing paper here. If we are to believe Blair, it was all cooked up inside the Cabinet Office to discredit him. And he’s accusing us of conspiracy theory?