Having the Arab world against us like this does NOT lead to any stability...in fact Saddam would have imploded on his own as things were so bad there....
meanwhile:
Cheney 'Waged War' on Blair Iraq
Strategy
by James Blitz in London and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Dick Cheney, US vice-president, "waged a guerrilla war" against attempts
by Tony Blair, the British prime minister, to secure United Nations backing
for the invasion of Iraq.
Mr Cheney remained implacably opposed to the
strategy even after George W. Bush, US
president, addressed the UN on the importance
of a multilateralist approach, according to a new
biography of Mr Blair.
The US vice-president, along with the
neo-conservatives in the Bush administration,
has consistently argued that the US could be
constrained by the UN's inability to reach
agreement over the need to invade Iraq.
He told the World Economic Forum in Davos at
the weekend: "There comes a time when deceit
and defiance must be seen for what they are. At
that point, a gathering danger must be directly
confronted. At that point, we must show that
beyond our resolutions is actual resolve."
The extent of Mr Cheney's opposition emerges in
the biography of the British prime minister by
Philip Stephens, the Financial Times' political
columnist.
In the run-up to the war, Mr Blair worked closely with Mr Bush to try to
secure prior UN backing.
But Mr Stephens writes that Mr Cheney's opposition to UN involvement left
Mr Blair uncertain whether Mr Bush would go down the UN route until he
uttered the relevant words in his speech to the UN general assembly in
September 2002. One Blair aide remarked: "[Mr Cheney] waged a guerrilla
war against the process . . . He's a visceral unilateralist". Another agreed:
"Cheney fought it all the way - at every twist and turn, even after Bush's
speech to the UN."
In the US, Democrats have also accused Mr Cheney of putting pressure on
intelligence agencies to produce evidence Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction. On Friday, David Kay, the top US weapons inspector in Iraq,
resigned, saying he did not believe Iraq had large stocks of biological and
chemical weapons.
Mr Stephens' book reveals a string of acid interventions by Mr Cheney
during critical talks between the president and prime minister at Camp
David in September 2002. Once, he directly rebuked Alastair Campbell, Mr
Blair's communications director.
In occasional contacts with British officials, Scooter Libby, the
vice-president's chief of staff, made little secret of his boss's scorn for
multilateralism. He once jibed: "Oh dear, we'd better not do that or we might
upset the prime minister."
Mr Stephens also reveals that Mr Blair was concerned about relations with
other European leaders, particularly Jacques Chirac, French president.
Mr Blair confided in close aides before the Iraq war that he believed Mr
Chirac was personally "out to get him" because he feared the UK prime
minister was usurping his own position as the natural leader of Europe.
According to Mr Stephens, the prime minister came to the view that Mr
Chirac wanted to see him fall from power after receiving intelligence reports
about the French president's private conversations.
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2004
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