Newly released documents detail tensions between the U.K. and the U.S. as the Iraq War unfolded, with concerns that American military actions were lacking political oversight.
Downing Street memos reveal strains between London and Washington as the Iraq invasion began to unravel in 2004, prompting aides to warn that Tony Blair would need to deliver 'difficult messages' to the US president.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and American President George W Bush meets at the G8 summit in 2005 (Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire)after warning that US military successes were being exaggerated and George W Bush believed he was on a “mission from God”, according to previously unseen documents. The remarkably candid comments to Britain’s ambassador to Washington by Richard “Rich” Armitage, the deputy to US secretary of state Colin Powell, were part of a run of events in the spring of 2004 which persuaded senior UK figures that American troops appeared to be operating in Iraq without “proper political control”.to the US president in April 2004, offers a rare insight into the behind-the-scenes strains between London and Washington over the unravelling of the Iraq invasion a year earlier, with one senior aide warning that Blair would need to “deliver some difficult messages” to Despite Bush’s now infamous “mission accomplished” declaration on a US aircraft carrier just weeks after the toppling of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in April 2003, the US and its allies, led by Britain, subsequently found themselves increasingly ensnared in aConcern at American tactics to confront militants reached a peak early in April 2004 after the murder of US military contractors in the city of Fallujah led to American forces launching a ferocious assault against Sunni fighters, inflicting heavy civilian casualties and generating resentment among Iraqis. It was in this context that Sir David Manning, the UK ambassador to Washington, met with Armitage on 14 April to lay the groundwork for Blair’s visit in the coming days – only to then receive a remarkably unvarnished assessment from very top of the Bush administration of the president’s mindset and America’s military progres
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