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The last of our case studies concerns another conflict which, at the time of writing, is still ongoing: the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Military action was launched by a US-led coalition on 20 March 2003 as a ‘pre-emptive’ strike, justified mainly through allegations (subsequently proven to be false) that Iraq possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD). A secondary
7 Postwar Iraq Tony Blair’s foreign policy following the invasion of Iraq continued to display the features of a high perceived degree of influence over events, certainty in the framing of issues, and the use of tightly held decisionmaking processes, coupled with a determined closeness to the United States. Blair’s room for manoeuvre was quite narrow during this late period of his prime ministership – having staked his career on Iraq and involved the British state in a war against the better judgment of much of the domestic political scene, he would have found
Background: a war approaching The US-led coalition waged its ‘official’ war against Iraq from 19 March to 1 May 2003. 1 The Bush Administration had been building up to the armed intervention throughout 2002 by defining three countries thought to possess or have the potential to develop weapons of mass destruction – Iran, Iraq and
6 Iraq War case study Introduction The UK media subjected the Iraq invasion to more scrutiny than their counterparts in the US, but this was constrained by strong and increasingly coordinated strategic efforts to ‘manage’ public opinion regarding the war (see, for example, Tumber and Palmer, 2004; Miller 2004b). In 2014, over a decade after the invasion of Iraq, the idea of the release of the Chilcott Inquiry report in the UK seems a futuristic fantasy. Nichols and McChesney were right to talk in the US of ‘tragedy and farce’ (2005): they give an extensive
Of the three addressed in this book, the Iraq case is the best known because of the recent press coverage it has received. Reports of the commissioning, hearings and conclusion of the Baha Mousa Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of one of the detainees interrogated in this episode were accompanied by a photograph of Baha Mousa with his family, the post-mortem photograph of
6 Iraq – Blair’s war The decision to invade Iraq is the most controversial of Blair’s wars, undertaken without public support, and with significant disquiet among members of his government and political party. At several points it looked as though the decision to go to war could cost the prime minister his job – an incredible turn-around for a politician used to great popularity and colossal parliamentary majorities. Blair didn’t waver. Once it became clear that the Bush administration was set on its course, strong incentives existed from an alliance maintenance
displacement of the left’s most fundamental values by a misguided strategic choice, namely, opposition to the US, come what may. This dictated the apologetic mumbling about the mass murder of US citizens, and it dictated that the US must be opposed in what it was about to do in hitting back at al-Qaida and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. (A more extended statement of my views on this subject is to be found in my answer to the question about Michael Walzer in ‘Marxism, the Holocaust and September 11th’.) The liberation of Iraq Something similar has now been repeated
This book examines the intellectual frameworks within which the case for war in Iraq has developed in the US and the UK. It analyzes the neoconservative roots of the decision to go to war. The book also analyzes the humanitarian intervention rationale that was developed in the context of the Kosovo campaign, Tony Blair's presentation of it, and the case of Iraq. It looks at the parallel processes through which the George Bush administration and Blair government constructed their cases for war, analyzing similarities and divergences in approach. The book considers the loci of the intelligence failure over Iraq, the lessons for the intelligence communities, and the degree to which the decision to go to war in Iraq represented a policy rather than an intelligence failure. It then complements the analyses of US prewar intelligence failures by analysing what post-war inquiries have revealed about the nature of the failure in the UK case. The book discusses the relationship between intelligence and policymaking. It looks at how US Congress dealt with intelligence before the war. The book also examines how the Bush administration tried to manage public opinion in support of its war policies. It then looks at the decisionmaking process of the Bush administration in the year before the war in Iraq. Finally, the book also provides excerpts from a number of speeches and documents which are key to understanding the nature of national security decisionmaking and intelligence failure.
The intelligence community’s uneven performance on Iraq from 2002 to 2004 raised significant questions concerning the condition of intelligence collection, analysis, and policy support. The discussion of shortcomings and failures that follows is not meant to imply that all surprises can be prevented by even good intelligence. There are too many targets and too many ways of
. The interaction of these styles shaped every stage of the Iraq conflict. The shock of 9/11 motivated President Bush to focus intently upon foreign policy. He was drawn to a stark framing of the post-9/11 world as a battle between good and evil. His history-making bent drew him toward an ambitious and proactive response, and moralism combined with ambition in a deeply held commitment to the promotion of