Blair, Bush & Iraq | 6. With You Whatever

The Fault Line: Dying for a Fight

Sony Music

Society & Culture, News, Documentary, Politics, True Crime

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tony Blair writes to George Bush “I’m with you whatever”. But now he needs to do two things: persuade the UK that war against Saddam is necessary, and the Americans that they need to seek international support for military action. The result is a decision by Bush to try and win round the United Nations, and an intelligence dossier that will haunt Blair forever. Want the full story? Unlock all episodes of The Fault Line, ad-free, right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of The Fault Line show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. A Somethin' Else & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It's September 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq, and George Bush is coming to the United Nations.
0:15.2	On behalf of the General Assembly I have the honor to welcome to the United Nations.
0:20.6	His Excellency, Mr George W Bush.
0:24.0	He's about to give a speech, keenly anticipated in both Washington and in London.
0:30.0	And of course, whenever there's a major speech coming up by an American president,
0:34.4	the British embassy somewhere mostly in Washington will try and find out what's in it before it happens.
0:39.2	This is Sir Jeremy Greenstock.
0:42.2	I was a career diplomat ending up at the UN as UK Permanent Representative in New York.
0:48.2	And so if the President's coming to make a speech to the UN,
0:51.8	Jeremy's job is to find out what he's going to say in advance.
0:55.2	And we had good liaison, there was plenty of good communication.
0:59.2	But this time, there's a problem.
1:01.2	Americans make their final decisions on big issues amongst Americans and behind closed doors,
1:06.7	and even the Brits find it quite difficult to invade that.
1:10.0	Which means that Jeremy doesn't know what Bush is going to say.
1:17.4	He knows what he hopes he'll say,
1:19.4	that he'll call for a new United Nations resolution
1:22.3	that would halt the march towards war in Iraq.
1:26.4	The line he was looking for would go something like this.
1:29.3	Therefore my administration requests that the UN tries to adopt a resolution compelling Saddam Hussein
1:39.1	to bring the inspectors back and obey previous resolutions.
1:44.0	It was a resolution needed by Ternib Blair so that he could maintain his stance of being shoulder to shoulder with George Bush.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sony Music, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Sony Music and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.