March 14, 2002: British Official Tells Rice that Blair Supports Regime Change in Iraq

Sir David Manning, the British prime minister’s foreign policy adviser, meets with President George Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. In a summary of the meeting written for Tony Blair, Manning says: “We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq. It is clear that Bush is grateful for your support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a parliament, and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge on your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option.” [United Kingdom, 3/14/2002 ; Daily Telegraph, 3/21/2005; Guardian, 4/21/2005; Los Angeles Times, 6/15/2005] Manning reports that the “big questions” have not been thoroughly considered by the US president. Bush, he notes, “has yet to find the answers… [about] how to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified” and how to deal with “what happens on the morning after.” [United Kingdom, 3/14/2002 ; Washington Post, 6/12/2005] With regard to the problem of international opinion, Manning says he suggested to Rice that “[r]enewed refusal by Saddam to accept unfettered inspections would be a powerful argument” in convincing others to support an invasion. [Daily Telegraph, 3/21/2005; Guardian, 4/21/2005; Los Angeles Times, 6/15/2005]