The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (97 page)

The Iraq situation was better. The airport at Baghdad was eighty per cent under control. The Republican Guard was on the run. The broadcasters there were finally beginning to accept that we were doing well. There were signs now of regime collapse. Our main media focus today was the [BBC] World Service Arabic Service and Abu Dhabi TV. The Islamic media team were doing well. We also had some good Iraqi exiles in who were able to talk about the regime far more convincingly than we could. We signed off the TB letter to the Iraqis which we were going to be getting out through the military. The main message for the interviews was that it was a war on Saddam not Iraq. We were also pushing the line that Iraqis wanted to see money spent on schools not palaces. Pictures came in of Saddam out on the streets but it was not entirely clear that it was him rather than a lookalike.

TB did a video conference with Bush. Dick Cheney, Condi and Andy Card were also in the shot. Cheney said next to nothing, just sat there looking menacing. I couldn’t work out whether he always looked like that or it was an effect he sought to create. They went over the Middle East again, Russia, military update, but TB said afterwards he preferred the one-on-one phone calls to the video conference. There was something about it that made him feel constrained, unable to speak freely. There was also something a bit surreal about the fact that while we could see them on the main screen, there was an ordinary TV screen to one side, Peter O’Toole starring in some old-style Zulu war film [
Zulu Dawn
, 1979].

I saw TB again before he went up to the flat. He was concerned GB was setting himself up to walk by claiming TB had sought to rewrite the euro assessment politically. TB’s view anyway was that it was a political process based on economic judgements. The assessment per se could not decide. That had, ultimately, to be a political judgement. Dan B called as I was leaving to say AP [Associated Press] were on to the Belfast visit. I knocked up a quick briefing note with Ben Wilson [press officer] to use it to get out basic message on Iraq, MEPP and NI.

The military picture was changing fast. As I arrived at the office for the 9am meeting, Sky was showing US tanks going through Baghdad. Things were also going a lot better in Basra and the mood was much improved all round. The regime was refusing humanitarian help. However, the post-conflict issues were looking really ragged. Though we were trying to minimise the differences, the truth was there were differences between us and the US, and differences between the White House, Powell and Rumsfeld. TB said to me he couldn’t understand how I could think about leaving when we were in a position to sort the big geopolitical questions for the next generation, and surely it was right to see the whole thing through.

At the War Cabinet, issues to do with the future of Iraq were becoming more difficult. Clare’s tone was becoming more menacing. Scarlett said there was a possibility Chemical Ali was dead. I went up to Mum and Dad’s with Grace and did the conference call from Robert’s [Templeton, sick relative] bedside. I raised the issue of a planned ORHA briefing for Monday which I said would be a bad thing at the time TB was seeing Bush. Dan and Tucker [Eskew, White House media affairs] both agreed and we would try to move it. The military situation was getting better all the time but as the prospect of winning came closer, the aftermath issues became more pressing.

David M and Matthew Rycroft were pulling together the post-conflict arguments for TB. It was difficult. David called when I was on the train home and said we were meeting a fair bit of American resistance. I got home and Fiona and I had another heart-to-heart. She thought the kids were fed up with it and she was determined that we should leave together. I don’t suppose I handled it very well, just raged about how I hated being pressurised like this when I had so much on my plate at the moment. The reality was I was unsure what I wanted to do. I was very torn.

Fiona picked a fight this morning as soon as I went downstairs with some jibe about ‘the thought police’. I said it was time she got a grip of herself. She ended up calling me a bastard and throwing a cup at me, which smashed on the floor at my feet. She was more angry than I had ever known her and taking it all out on me. Part of me understood. Part of me resented it. But I had a terrible sense of foreboding about it. I left for the office feeling like shit. At the intel
meeting, the news was overwhelmingly good. Basra was going according to plan. Around Baghdad the US troops were really going for it now. All our problems really related to the future of Iraq. [Ahmed] Chalabi [expatriate Iraqi dissident], a friend of Rumsfeld and [Paul] Wolfowitz [Deputy Defense Secretary], was putting himself around the whole time as a key player, possible future leader, when the reality was he would be unacceptable.
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The nature of a UN role was becoming the key difficulty. The Americans didn’t want the French in particular to be involved, and because of the reality of the P5 [permanent UNSC members – US, UK, France, Russia and China], that meant the UN. Their general take was that they had given the UN the opportunity to deal with this, the UN had fucked it up, and didn’t deserve to be straight back in the game. But TB was firmly of the view they should be rebuilding relationships, not keeping them broken. He said at one meeting of the inner group ‘I did Iraq because I thought it was right and I am prepared to take whatever comes my way to do what I think is right. But I’m not prepared to stand up for something I think is wrong.’ He was back to the notion that they were doing the right thing in the wrong way. We wanted an interim authority that was mainly Iraqi, then a truly representative government. TB felt his job was still to keep the US focused on the UN route but the pressures in the States were all the other way, to present the UN as a bad thing that shouldn’t be allowed near the place. Dan called to say Bush had agreed to our idea of a joint Iraqi TV broadcast with TB so I worked on a script. Then domestic problems took another bad turn, Fiona sending Jonathan an email saying she intended to resign. TB said he would see her on Wednesday when we got back.

On the flight to Belfast TB worked on a note for Bush setting out why it was so important to get the UN properly involved – to show our commitment to rebuilding after the divisions in the international community, for the Arab world, for Europe. It was a two-page note, very clear and rational. We landed, got a helicopter to Hillsborough. As I was making a few calls in my room, TB called me through to
his room. He asked how my situation was at home. I said that unless I had an exit date, I had no ‘marriage’. He said he was really saddened and disappointed, but he understood. He would not put me under pressure to stay. He felt it was a bad move for me, that I would forever regret not seeing the whole thing through to the end. ‘But you need to know you have done more for me than anyone, more than I could have asked for, I could not have done it without you, and I will not feel let down, so let me relieve you of any pressure you may feel on that front.’ But I did feel it, because I knew he valued the close team around him and I knew I made a difference. I felt it very strongly here at Hillsborough because there had been so many good and bad moments here, but I knew I had helped with both.

We stood at the window and I reminded him of the time we came here in Opposition and he looked out over the grounds at Hillsborough and said the Tories were not going to give it all up without a real fight. We had won that fight and I knew a lot of that was down to me and the work I’d done for him, and it was not easy to walk away from it. He asked me when I wanted to go. I said summer at the latest, maybe conference, maybe before. He just nodded. We went round in circles for a while and then he said I would have to help him find a successor. I felt David Hill [former Labour Party chief spokesman] was possibly the only option. We went downstairs to wait for Bush and Co. to arrive. They flew in, then drove up, GWB, Powell, Condi and Andy Card in Bush’s car. TB and Bush having a fair bit of time together. At one point they came back from a walk and Bush was talking about his favourite presidents – Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan. He said Reagan made the country feel good again and he saved the Republican Party.

I tried to go out for a run but was stopped at every second tree by bloody American security men jumping out from trees. Gave up after a couple of miles. Bush seemed to be going in the right direction on MEPP, said he intended to put real pressure on Sharon. He was still not in bridge-building mode elsewhere, said that he didn’t want TB to accept Putin’s invite to meet VP, Chirac and Schroeder at St Petersburg. Meanwhile Clare had sent through a note listing all sorts of points she wanted TB to raise with Bush. Jack was of the view that it didn’t matter too much if she went. TB felt it was a good discussion but he was concerned that Bush was in such a different position re the UN and trying to rebuild relations. Jack felt they really were pressing for a right-wing government there, though Bush seemed to be pretty clear [Ahmed] Chalabi was a non-starter.

TB said ‘this neocon stuff’ was crazy. I had asked Dan last night what ‘neocon’ meant and he said it was the belief that government had a moral purpose. I said does that mean moral purpose can only be right wing? TB felt today’s meeting with Bush was going to be tough. It was clear Condi was pushing a fairly hard line re the UN. We had a fight on our hands to keep in a ‘vital role’ [in the press conference script]. She wanted ‘important’ which sounded too grudging. ‘It’s meant to be,’ she said. My other worry was that it might be briefed they had downgraded it. TB was determined we had to get something out of this and in the end, largely thanks to Bush, we did. Bush was excellent on Northern Ireland, and on MEPP, linked the two well by saying he would spend as much time and energy on MEPP as TB did on NI, then excellent too on the UN role. He was good on the war message too. The general feeling afterwards was that it was the best media performance he’d done.

It was interesting to watch him in the main meeting today, where he was letting TB do a lot of the talking, then taking in Powell’s and Condi’s views in particular, then more or less saying what we expected him to in the first place. He seemed restless too, a bit fidgety. He and TB were in the big armchairs by the fireplace, the rest dotted around the room, Jack and Powell on the sofa together. Powell was talking at one point when Bush got up, got himself a coffee, asked me if I wanted one and came over to talk to me about the marathon. When is it? What time will I do? How much money will I raise? Dan pointed out that I had a piece in
The Times
on it and Bush picked it up and read it, getting to the end plug for Leukaemia Research. ‘You doing it for leukaemia? Did you know my sister died from leukaemia? Would you like me to give you a cheque?’ I certainly would, I said.

He went to the door giving on to the lounge, opened it and shouted out ‘Blake [Gottesman, aide], get my chequebook.’ Later the cops said he created an absolute stir because nobody had a clue that he had a chequebook with him, let alone where it was, though they did find it eventually, and he wrote out a cheque there and then. He said his sister was called Robin and died aged seven when he was four. ‘I will do this because you are my friend,’ he said, ‘but I am also doing it for her.’ I asked if the charity could publicise it. Sure, he said. TB came over and asked what I was up to. I said the president had just given me a cheque so where’s yours?

Bush seemed seem to buy into TB’s line that he had to develop a bigger international message that was not just terrorism but MEPP, world poverty, environment, etc. He was pretty vile re Chirac, said
he felt betrayed, that Chirac had gone against him not on the merits but as part of a general anti-US strategy and he would never forgive that. ‘The only thing that would swing me round to France is regime change.’ Bush said he would maybe rebuild with Schroeder first but he wanted TB to make sure he knew he felt personally affronted and he would only think about putting things back together with them on the clear understanding German foreign policy was not run by the French.

TB seemed to have worked a fair bit of influence on him because the general reaction from the press conference was that Bush went well beyond what was expected. He also tore a bit of a strip off Condi at the pre-meeting when she was still picking away at him, and he suddenly said ‘There is too much tension in here.’ He asked everyone to leave apart from me, Blake and Magi Cleaver [Number 10 press officer]. TB and Bush also had a fairly long stroll, just the two of them while Jack continued to work on Condi, Powell and Dan Fried [National Security Council], saying that the warmer the words re the UN, the greater the influence within it. Jack and I both fought very hard to keep ‘vital’ in the text, and eventually they agreed to it. Later Dan said, only half in jest I think, ‘Can we win any of these arguments at all?’ He obviously had the counter-worry, that if Bush was too warm re the UN, he would get hit at home. TB said to Bush ‘that was a very rash promise’ – to spend as much time on MEPP as he had on NI.

Bush knew he had done pretty well. I was trying to get them up to do the Iraqi TV pieces to camera straight away while they were still in the mood. Bush’s crowd were gathering round him clearly telling him he had gone too far in our direction. Both Condi and Dan looked slightly panicked, though he was holding firm and seemed not to be bothered. During the press conference Powell had slipped a note to Condi saying they would have to send a ‘Rummygram’, to warn Rumsfeld of what he was saying. Jack was trying to joke with Condi about it but she was clearly not happy. She said he had risked bad US reaction re the UN and they would have to make some calls to see how bad it was. Bush overheard and snapped back at her ‘I don’t want any pulling back on this.’ We were due to do the broadcast recording on the same floor as the bedrooms. I went up with them, and went in to TB’s room while he tidied himself up. Bush came in after a while. ‘Hey, they didn’t make your bed yet.’ He said he was getting a bit of grief from his people but he was fine with what he said. TB said it was the right thing to do. We sorted the filming logistics, then down to meet Bertie [Ahern] who was arriving for lunch,
and then the other parties. The press conference was running pretty much word perfect for us.