Personal Finance

Earl Anthony · Guest

June 30, 2005, 5:39 AM EDT

LONDON -- For Prime Minister Tony Blair, the road to Iraq started with
9/11. The British leader said Wednesday in an interview with The
Associated Press that the attacks on U.S. soil fundamentally changed
"the balance of risk" in the world, sharing President Bush's view that
the tragedy had made a robust show of force an urgent priority.

The attacks, he said, made it necessary to "draw a line in the sand
here, and the country to do it with was Iraq because they were in breach
of U.N. resolutions going back over many years."

Sitting on a stone terrace overlooking the garden of his Downing Street
residence, Blair reflected on how Sept. 11 convinced him of the need for
a new approach to the threat of international terror.

"9/11 changed the whole picture for me, it changed the politics of how
we dealt with the threat," he said.

He said his actions were based on personal conviction -- not in the hope
of any quid pro quo on other issues, such as climate control, Africa
aid, or the Middle East, as some have suggested.

"As I always say to people, my support for America is not based on, you
know, 'You give us support on this, and you get that in return,'" he
said. "I should only do what is right for Britain, and the president
should only do what is right for America."

Despite his strong linkage of the Iraq campaign to the Sept. 11 attacks,
Blair denied that the decision to go to war had been fixed long before
it was carried out. He said the so-called "Downing Street memos," which
suggest the Bush administration had made up it mind to invade by 2002,
painted a distorted picture.

"People say the decision was already taken. The decision was not already
taken," he said.

According to the minutes of the meeting where the leaked memos were
taken, Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of Britain's intelligence
service, said the White House viewed military action against Saddam
Hussein as inevitable following the Sept. 11 attacks.

President Bush "wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," read the memo, seen
by the AP. "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the
policy."

In the interview, Blair said raising such concerns was a natural part of
any examination of the cause for war.

"The trouble with having a political discussion on the basis of things
that are leaked is that they are always taken right out of context.
Everything else is omitted from the discussion and you end up focusing
on a specific document," he said. "It would be absolutely weird if, when
the Iraq issue was on the agenda, you were not constantly raising
issues, trying to work them out, get them in the right place," he said.

"The most important thing we can do in Iraq is concentrate on the fact
.... that what is happening there is a monumental battle that affects our
own security," said Blair. "You've got every bad element in the whole of
the Middle East in Iraq trying to stop that country (from getting) on
its feet and (becoming) a democracy."

Blair echoed Bush's pledge on Tuesday to keep U.S. forces in Iraq until
the fight is won. "There is only one side to be on now, and it is time
we got on it and stuck in there and get the job done, and not leave
until the job is done," Blair said.

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