Jack Straw was Tony Blair‘s Foreign Secretary in the lead-up and launching of the Invasion of Iraq. This letter was recently made public [from March 25, 2002]. It was written three weeks after Dick Cheney‘s visit to London to talk about ‘regime change’ in Iraq:
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CRAWFORD/IRAQ 1. The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few. The risks are high, both for you and for the Government. I judge that there is at present no majority inside the PLP for any military action against Iraq, (alongside a greater readiness in the PLP to surface their concerns). Colleagues know that Saddam and the Iraqi regime are bad. Making that case is easy. But we have a long way to go to convince them as to: (a) the scale of the threat from Iraq and why this has got worse recently:
(b) what distinguishes the Iraqi threat from that of eg Iran and North Korea so as to justify military action;
(c) the justification for any military action in terms of international law:
and (d) whether the consequence of military action really would be a compliant, law-abiding replacement government.
2. The whole exercise is made much more difficult to handle as long as conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is so acute. THE SCALE OF THE THREAT 3. The Iraqi regime plainly poses a most serious threat to its neighbours, and therefore to international security. However, in the documents so far presented it has been hard to glean whether the threat from Iraq is so significantly differently from that of Iran and North Korea as to justify military action (see below). WHAT IS WORSE NOW? 4. If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the US would now be considering military action against Iraq. In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with UBL and Al Qaida. Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September. What has however changed is the tolerance of the international community (especially that of the US), the world having witnessed on September 11 just what determined evil people can these days perpetuate. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IRAQ, IRAN AND NORTH KOREA 5. By linking these countries together in this “axis of evil” speech, President Bush implied an identity between them not only in terms of their threat, but also in terms of the action necessary to deal with the threat, but also in terms of the action necessary to deal with the threat. A lot of work will now need to be to de-link the three, and to show why military action against Iraq is so much more justified than against Iran and North Korea. The heart of this case — that Iraq poses a unique and present danger — rests on the facts that it:
THE POSITION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 6. That Iraq is in flagrant breach of international legal obligations imposed on it by the UNSC provides us with the core of a strategy, and one which is based on international law. Indeed, if the argument is to be won, the whole case against Iraq and in favour (if necessary) of military action, needs to be narrated with reference to the international rule of law. 7. We also have better to sequence the explanation of what we are doing and why. Specifically, we need to concentrate in the early stages on:
8. I know there are those who say that an attack on Iraq would be justified whether or not weapons inspectors were readmitted. But I believe that a demand for the unfettered readmission of weapons inspectors in essential, in terms of public explanation, and in terms of legal sanction for any subsequent military action. 9. Legally there are two potential elephant traps: (i) regime change per se is no justification for military action; it could form part of the method of any strategy, but not a goal. Of course, we may want credibly to assert that regime change is an essential part of the strategy by which we have to achieve our ends — that of the elimination of Iraq’s WMD capacity; but the latter has to be the goal;
(ii) on whether any military action would require a fresh UNSC mandate (Desert Fox did not). The US are likely to oppose any idea of a fresh mandate. On the other side, the weight of legal advice here is that a fresh mandate may well be required. There is no doubt that a new UNSCR would transform the climate in the PLP. Whilst that (a new mandate) is very unlikely, given the US’s position, a draft resolution against military action with 13 in favour (or handsitting) and two vetoes against could play very badly here.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF ANY MILITARY ACTION 10. A legal justification is a necessary but far from sufficient pre-condition for military action. We have also to answer the big question — what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything. Most of the assessments from the US have assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq’s WMD threat. But none has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured, and how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better. 11. Iraq has had no history of democracy so no-one has this habit or experience. (JACK STRAW)
Foreign and Commonwealth Office 25 March 2002 |
Jack Straw testified at the Chilcot Inquiry on January 21, 2010:
We had some compelling evidence from Jack Straw today – he could not bring himself to directly criticise Tony Blair but he made it perfectly clear that the two men had not agreed in the build up to the war in Iraq. He hinted that he had thought about coming out against the invasion and resigning from the Government [although when asked directly, he denied it]. Questioned about the letters between Mr Blair and Mr Bush, the former Foreign Secretary became agitated. He tried to avoid discussing them but said he would not have written the notes in the same way. “Would I have written the memo in the same way? Probably not."
Mr Straw made it clear that he had told Mr Blair throughout 2002 that it would have been illegal to invade Iraq for the purpose of regime change. Asked it the Prime Minister agreed he said: “It is no great surprise to know that people at senior levels in government hold different views and debate those. What I had to offer the Prime Minister was my best judgment and my loyalty”…
RT HON JACK STRAW: Yes, there was a debate and crucial that there should have been a debate, and my mind certainly wasn’t made up at this time. Let me be clear about this: that and this I was clear about whatever the policy of the United States, which, as it happens was for regime change, as a purpose of foreign policy, that was off the agenda so far as the United Kingdom was concerned. I certainly, and always had done, in the abstract and in reality, accepted that you could have a diplomatic strategy for a different purpose, which had to be backed by the threat or, if necessary, the use of force, but a foreign policy objective of regime change, I regarded as improper and also self evidently unlawful. But leave aside the lawfulness of it, it had no chance of being a runner in the United Kingdom. It would not have got my support. The case therefore stood or fell on whether Iraq posed a threat to international peace and security by reasons of its weapons of mass destruction, not on whether it had an extremely unpleasant authoritarian regime that was butchering its own people, because in international law, I am afraid, that is not a good ground for intervention by other states.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: So that was essentially the debate?
RT HON JACK STRAW: Yes.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: So would your recommendation at that stage have been that we should essentially aim to continue with the containment rather than go down a regime change route?
RT HON JACK STRAW: Well, may I just say, the route that I recommended to the Prime Minister, which seemed to me to be a practical route, was not a route of regime change. The route that I recommended to the Prime Minister was that containment as I say, of course, I thought about this and in a sense that’s what I was paid for and it would have been an extraordinary dereliction of duty if I had not thought about this and I don’t want to use the word "agonise" in the sense of because, you know, if you take these jobs on you have got to make decisions, but you have to think very hard about what you are doing. Of course there was debate about whether we should just put up with containment, but the problem with just putting up with containment, notwithstanding 1409, was that it wasn’t going anywhere, and there we were. Meanwhile, the perception of the risk had completely changed and there was also I mean…
SIR RODERIC LYNE: The perception had changed. Had the risk changed?
RT HON JACK STRAW: Sir Roderic, I actually don’t know what the difference is between a perception of risk and risk, because risk is something that is perceived.
To borrow a phrase used by Jack Straw and a favorite of President Obama, let me be clear about this, the public commentary and the presentation to Congress by the Bush Administration did not state that our primary goal in invading Iraq was regime change. They said we were invading because we had credible evidence that Iraq posed a real threat to our National Security – having Weapons of Mass Destruction and ties with the Terrorists that attacked New York. They explain the absence of confirmation of either allegation as an "intelligence failure." The only intelligence that failed was theirs – for lying – and ours – for buying it.
Since I don’t watch tv news, I don’t know if there is any converage of this. But I don’t see it in the newspapers or even on such collectors of news as Huffington Post.
As you have asked, why not? Of course, we know why now; but how do they justify not covering it?
I’m about where you are Ralph in terms of news acquisition behavior. It seems like the story of the century (or very well should be) and as painful as the process will be for us, the willful deception of our highest elected officials, I agree with Mickey that the way forward is not going to work in the long run. Dirty laundry that must be aired, observed and commented on by any interested party I’m afraid. I was happy thinking that all this kind of criminal malarkey was characteristic of the old cold war and Monroe Doctrine America.
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