Leaked U.S. memo reveals Blair, Bush’s deal over Iraq War

CAIRO – 19 October 2017: A White House memo claims that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the US conflict over Iraq a year before the invasion started, the Daily Mail reported.

The memo was written on March 28, 2002, by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to President George Bush. It stated that Powell told Bush that Blair “will be with us” on military action. Powell assured the president that “the UK will follow our lead,” the Daily Mail said.

“The memos prove in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a front man for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet,” former Tory Shadow Home Secretary David Davis told the Daily Mail.

The documents, obtained by the Daily Mail, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton, which US courts have forced her to reveal.

The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition, which overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next decade, as an insurgency erupted to oppose the occupying forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government
An estimated 151,000 to 600,000 or more Iraqis were killed in the first 3–4 years of conflict. The U.S. became re-involved in 2014 at the head of a new coalition. The insurgency and many dimensions of the civil armed conflict continue.

The invasion occurred under the pretext of waging a war againt international terrorism following the September 11 terror attacks.