Blair planned Iraq invasion 'from 2002'
Updated on 30 November 2009
Former British ambassador to the US Sir David Manning tells the Chilcot inquiry Tony Blair started planning for possible military action in Iraq in June 2002. Gary Gibbon reports.
Sir David Manning, Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser at the time, said the Ministry of Defence offered three possibilities, only one of which was a full deployment of land forces.
Within four months, Tony Blair had decided on the full-scale option.
But he also insisted that Mr Blair repeatedly told President Bush that Britain could not take part in action against Iraq unless it was through the United Nations.
Giving evidence on the fifth day of Sir John Chilcot's inquiry into the UK's involvement in Iraq between 2001 and 2009, Sir David Manning said that President Bush had first raised the issue of Iraq with Tony Blair just three days after the 11 September attacks in the United States.
Sir David maintained that the then British prime minister, Tony Blair, had argued that military action against Iraq could only be justified if the evidence in its favour was "very compelling".
He also gave the first insider's account of the summit between Mr Bush and Mr Blair at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where both men are supposed to have signed up to go to war.
They did nothing of the sort, according to Sir David, mainly discussing the situation in the Middle East.
