Introducing: The Fault Line: Bush, Blair and Iraq

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The New Statesman

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🗓️ 7 October 2020

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

On September 11th 2001, as he faced incalculable losses after the terrorist attacks that day, President George W Bush made a call to his greatest international ally: British Prime Minister Tony Blair. 18 months later, Bush and Blair led a coalition into a war that went horribly wrong. David Dimbleby, one of the BBC’s best known news hosts and reporters, takes us back to those crucial 18 months. Talking to prime ministers, politicians, spies and weapons inspectors he asks how and why we came to invade Iraq. And as we experience an era of lies and mistrust - did the events of 17 years ago set the stage for the world we live in now? This is a Somethin' Else production.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Iraq War came about following a moment of crisis, September 11th, 2001.
0:04.8	In real time, the world watched two of the world's biggest leaders, Tony Blair and George Bush,
0:09.6	react and make decisions based on fast-paced information presented to them, not unlike the moments
0:14.3	we're facing across the globe today. Hosted by renowned British journalist David Dimbleby,
0:18.7	this season of The Fault Line, Bush, Blair and Iraq, explores the 18 months between 9-11 and the start of the war and how the
0:26.2	distrust in leadership response to crisis affects our world today.
0:29.9	David Dimbleby takes us through the story with some of the most prominent individuals who shaped politics then and now.
0:35.8	Catch the fault line, Bush, Blair and Iraq on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Cast Box, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're happy to share a special preview of the show
0:45.0	with you here. Then head over to the feed to catch the entire season.
0:48.8	It's January 2003. Bill Murray is on a plane hunting down a new top secret contact.
0:56.0	The first stop on that trip was Kuala Lumpur because he was giving a speech at the Organization of Islamic Conference in Malaysia. Bill is a senior officer in the CIA and in 2003 he's the station chief in Paris, one of the top men in Europe, and he's on an urgent mission.
1:25.0	He has to find this high-level source and so he arrives in Kuala Lumpur.
1:31.0	And I just missed him.
1:33.5	No luck.
1:34.5	By the time you take a flight from Washington to Japan to
1:38.0	we have to transit through Singapore and then up to Malaysia and etc. I got there before he left but I was never able to get
1:46.0	into the hotel that he was in. Then he left shortly after I arrived I think the next
1:51.1	morning or something he left. The source was off this time to Jordan.
1:57.0	And by the time I arrived in Jordan in the middle of the night, people met me at the airport and said,
2:02.3	he's gone on to Cairo.
2:04.0	So Bill gets another flight to Cairo.
2:07.0	And arrived there again in the middle of the night
	...

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