Bush Plotting To Overthrow Saddam Nine Days After 9/11

George Bush asked for Tony Blair's backing to remove Saddam Hussein from power just nine days after the 11 September attacks, over a private dinner at the White House, a US magazine reported last night.

Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, was at the dinner table as Mr Blair replied that he would rather concentrate on ousting the Taliban and restoring peace in Afghanistan.

In a 25,000-word article in this month's American edition of Vanity Fair, Sir Christopher recounts Mr Bush as responding: "I agree with you Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq." Mr Blair, Sir Christopher writes, "said nothing to demur" at the prospect.

Sir Christopher's account presents a new challenge to Mr Blair's assertion that no decision was taken on the invasion of Iraq until just days before operations began, in March 2003. It implies regime change in Iraq was US policy immediately after 11 September.

el - It does more than imply but this again is stuff everyone should know. Everyone except Powell connected to foreign and military policy in Bush's cabinet had spend years waiting to get back in power to overthrow Saddam as the start for a new world war for the U.S.. This would be a war to create an unchallenged American Empire and insure a century of world dominance. The war would be to take down any state that had anything objectionable to American right-wing ideology. Non-state threats like al Qaeda were not considered except as being sponsered by states. The Vulcan neo-con radicals in the Bush administration were recreating their glory days of a cold war with the Soviet Union. See Pax Americana doctrine and Project for a New American Century, as they were quite open about developing this.