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Eagle Eye
Andrew Sparrow at the Guardian's politics blog pays me a high compliment in his reporting today of the Chilcot inquiry:
Why were the Americans so sure that Britain was going to take part in the Iraq war regardless of what happened at the UN? John Rentoul, who is running a one-man campaign to rebut anti-Blair bias in Iraq inquiry coverage, is really going to have his work cut out once the blogosphere gets its teeth into that one. Boyce's remark was fascinating, although Boyce himself could not explain why the Americans were so confident that the British would definitely come on board in the end. Was it just naive optimism? Or had they received some kind of secret assurance? I'm sceptical of conspiracy theories, and I don't pretend to know the answer.
I have my work cut out keeping up with the sheer volume of misleading coverage of Chilcot, but have no difficulty at all in explaining this one. This sort of question is baffling only if you start from the premise that the invasion was self-evidently and utterly wrong. That sometimes makes it hard to remember accurately the public debate before the invasion. The Americans thought Britain would be with them because Tony Blair told them so.
He had made clear that he thought that Saddam Hussein was a threat to peace, against whom only the threat of force would be effective. He had made clear that the US-UK relationship was central to his government's foreign policy. So, while the decision had not been finally or formally made, and while there were conditions attached to the UK's support, it was plain what Blair wanted to do.
All the conspiracy theories about "when was Britain (secretly) committed to war?" are a convoluted way of saying: "We didn't like it."
