The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (38 page)

C said that the presidential finding, based on an NSC paper, made clear it was regime change that they wanted. Pigott kept coming back to the point that Saddam could pull forces back to the cities, put them
among civilians, meanwhile reinforce the CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] sites. There was a discussion about who would replace Saddam and how could we guarantee it would be better. Scarlett said it couldn’t be worse. There was a discussion re Kabul which CDS said was getting more and more dangerous, and Turkey, who, CDS said, were taking over ISAF but basically leaving us to do the work. The Beeb was in the news because of a row about Peter Sissons [BBC news anchor] not wearing a black tie during the Queen Mum death coverage.

Amazingly, the row about Peter Sissons’ tie was still raging. Of course it was a mistake, but in the end so what, but the
Mail
et al. were in total fulmination mode. Peter M had responded to TB’s note in not dissimilar terms to mine. TB had obviously been talking to him about my state of mind. He said he felt he knew how I could regain happiness through work: 1. be nicer to TB, 2. get new blood around me, and 3. manage my time better. The lack of cohesion with the Treasury was really bothering me. TB was anxious that we get the focus for the meeting at Crawford [Texas] off Iraq simply and on to the Middle East. Second, how do we get the Americans to do more re the Middle East peace process without it looking like we are criticising them for not doing enough? He had told Bush a year ago that he should get more involved now because he would have to and he would eventually be playing catch-up.

The [pre-US trip NBC] interview was fine, pretty straight, Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan, about thirty-five minutes in total. TB was thinking hard about the visit, said his job was to give Bush a strategy, and to get the political processes up and running. It was clear both from David M and Chris Meyer that the US government was in a divided state, bordering on chaos. Cheney and Rumsfeld vs Powell, with Condi trying to get Bush engaged more, possibly with Powell. Bruce [Lord Grocott, Blair’s former parliamentary private secretary] did some good lines for TB’s [Commons] statement on the Queen Mum and between us we got some half-decent anecdotes. TB just about caught the moment.

I ran in, thirty-six minutes, up to see TB to go over Crawford/Middle East. DM wanted him to speak to Bush who coincidentally came through later in the day and they had a pretty good conversation. Bush was about to do a speech attacking both sides and saying he
was sending Powell to the region. That gave us plenty to brief around. TB had an hour with GB on the Budget but Gordon was still on his kick that we shouldn’t be talking too much about public services, a view TB described as absurd given that was the platform we were elected on. GB said you never heard the Tories talking about unemployment. They never said they would sort it, said TB. It’s like saying we should never talk about asylum. If it’s a problem, people know it’s a problem, and we have to deal with it. I saw what Philip meant about their clothes. GB was wearing a dark suit, a white shirt, a red tie, shoes that weren’t cleaned properly and socks that fell down round his ankles. TB was wearing Nicole Farhi shoes, ludicrous-looking lilac-coloured pyjama-style trousers and a blue smock. After GB left, I said he looked like [spoof 1960s spy] Austin Powers. He said you are the second person who’s said that. Gordon wasn’t the first. Probably one of the kids.

He was clearly not hopeful we could get GB any closer onside at the moment. But he still wanted me to try to work with him on strategy. I was in with him when he spoke to Bush and he was happy after the call, felt Bush was far more engaged and on the detail than we had been led to believe. I left to take Calum to a tennis match but then had to deal with a little flurry about TB/CB’s Egyptian holiday last Christmas. TB’s entry in the Register of Members’ Interests said it had been paid for by the Egyptian government and that he had made a donation to charity. But it seemed the money never went, partly because the Egyptians never said what charity it should go to. This would be the next crapola to deal with.

It was the day of the procession of the Queen Mother’s body to the lying-in-state. A beautiful sunny day, wall-to-wall coverage for the Royals, OK crowds, nice atmosphere. Up to see TB in the flat. Another Austin Powers moment. Yellow/green underpants and that was it. I said what a prat he looked. He said I was just jealous – how many prime ministers have got a body like this? Re the Egyptian holiday, he thought they had paid, but it seemed there was a mix-up at the Egyptian end and the cheque never went. Fiona spoke to John Sawers [UK ambassador to Egypt, Blair’s former foreign policy adviser] who was out in the desert and we told him it had to be sorted and we would get the cheque sent off today. Just before we took off for the States I did a conference call with Fiona, Anne Shevas and Martin Sheehan. We wanted to rectify the inaccurate Register [of Interests] points. I reminded TB that Henry McLeish [former Scottish First
Minister] ended up resigning over an inaccurate statement in the Register.

TB was seeing Jack later who suggested walking over to Westminster Hall. TB agreed and asked Gordon to go too. I said I thought it was a bad idea because it would look like they were trying to get attention. In the end they went by car. They went off as the procession came through. The crowds were far bigger than expected.

On the plane, we worked on the speech for tomorrow, pretty much wrote it himself, having decided he wanted to be totally supportive but also push for more US engagement. He would make clear we would support them on Iraq but also make the point about UN inspectors effectively as an ultimatum. We chatted around it for ages. I was worried it was too sugary re the Yanks but he insisted we had to do that to get them engaged in other ways. For example, he thought it was fair to say Bush’s speech on the Middle East yesterday was, at least in part, influenced by us. For the first time I could recall, he did his own written checklist for the meeting with Bush. He wanted to do Iraq and MEPP first so that he knew where he was. We arrived and TB was met by Condi and flown off to the ranch. We were taken to our hotel. TB was having a one-on-one dinner and we went out for dinner with Condi, Andy Card [chief of staff], Karen [Hughes], Anna Perez [press secretary to Barbara Bush], Karl Rove [senior adviser]. A lot of it was small talk, and Karl Rove trying to persuade us to get fitted up with big Texan boots. Meyer was the only one who did. We were eating in a steak house which served obscenely large steaks. They seemed a bit more tense than the last time and it might be they were just starting to feel the pressure more, or more likely that they knew this was a bit trickier.

Crawford, Texas. I went down to the gym in the hotel. There was an enormous woman on the only treadmill. Robin Oakley [CNN European political editor] called and she heard me speak and then, as she padded at the slowest possible pace, asked me if I was English, then if I knew Tony Blair. I said I did. She said she was so happy that the world was run by two God-fearing young men, Bush and Blair. She asked if I was his bodyguard and I said no. She said she prayed for Tony every day and she prayed for his bodyguards, for him to keep the world safe and for his bodyguards to keep him safe. She asked if I believed in God and I said no. She gave me a rather pitying look and then told me she was a member of the George W. Bush email prayer group and she was happy for me to be added to their list. Eventually
she got off the treadmill. I ran for half an hour but then got called up because TB had asked for me to go out to the ranch with David and Jonathan. I set off with Magi [Cleaver] for a 45-minute drive down dull roads through pretty dull scenery. The rain started. The security checks were fairly light and we were driven down to the guesthouse where TB, CB, Leo [Blair], Kathryn [Blair], Gail [Booth, Cherie’s mother] and Jackie the nanny were due to stay. It was a nice enough place but not exceptional. A flat bungalow with three bedrooms was the main residence. I hung around for a while in TB’s room. TB and Bush had talked mainly about Iraq last night and today had been more focused on the Middle East peace process, about how to deal with [Ariel] Sharon [Israeli Prime Minister] and Arafat. Bush felt they were tired and old and with no new vision. He thought Arafat was weak and useless. They were turning their minds to the press conference and Bush was someone who liked to prepare for these events carefully.

We were doing the press conference at a school in Crawford and the toughest questions were why had there been no response from Israel and did TB agree Saddam had to go. Bush’s posture and delivery were a lot better, more confident. We talked about it at the ranch before dinner. He said in the early days he got really knocked by the way they took the mickey out of the way he mangled words, and it made him hesitant, like when he said infitada instead of intifada and got mauled for it. Now he had given up caring what they think and it had made him more confident. He said the truth is I have a limited vocabulary, I’m not great with words, I have to think about what I say carefully. They had both been pretty heavy on Iraq and that was the story for most of them. The atmospherics were pretty good though. As we left the school, TB and I were walking to his car, GWB waiting and he shouted over ‘too late for fine tuning now’. I said I hear you didn’t like Trevor McDonald [ITN journalist who had recently interviewed Bush]. He said it just maddens him the way they all ask the same questions, so it’s a pain.

When we arrived back at the ranch, we chatted in a little group outside the bungalow. Barney his dog came over and he said ‘This is my Leo.’ I said hold on, Leo’s not a dog. Yes, he said, but Barney’s the substitute for the little boy I never had. They went back to talking about the Middle East, David [Manning] and Condi having spoken earlier to Colin Powell to try to get him to the Middle East earlier. TB was setting out steps that could be taken. He was convinced that Bush valued our input on this at least. I left with David and Jonathan. We went for lunch at the coffee station in Crawford with some of the
White House staff including Andy Card. They were certainly doing their best for us.

We were driven back out to the ranch for a drinks reception and dinner. It was very relaxed, a three-piece band playing in the corner, waiters and waitresses in jeans and work shirts, no starters, tournedos and a selection of puddings. GWB and Cherie were at one table with a set of guests and TB and Laura were at another and then other tables all around. Bush was wearing Texan boots and jeans. I was with Condi, Karen, a very right-wing former ambassador [Anne Armstrong, first female US ambassador to the UK] who was going to the Queen Mum’s funeral and one of the Bush daughters’ boyfriends.

Over drinks before and after dinner, I had a couple of long chats with GWB. He asked me why I wasn’t drinking and I said I was a recovering drunk. Me too, he said. I asked him how much he drank. He said two or three beers a day, a bit of wine, some bourbon. He gave up in August ’86, a few months after me. I went through the kind of quantities I was drinking at the end and said they dwarfed his efforts. I said that having a breakdown and not drinking had been the best thing that ever happened to me. It was like seeing the light. But you still don’t believe in God? he asked. No I don’t. We talked about his axis of evil speech. Karen had said to me earlier they had had no idea it would impact quite as hard as it did. He said that was bullshit – he knew, and he was serious. We talked about running. He could still do between 6.45 and 7.15 a mile and was thinking of doing his own race for charity. He was also a member of a club, qualification for which rested on the ability to run a sub-seven-minute mile when it was a hundred degrees in the shade. He had dragged TB out for a run and said he had had to hold back a bit. TB said it was the first run that far since he left university. After a couple of toasts, Bush then just got up and said everyone could leave because he wanted to go to bed. Everyone signed the menus. They were always extremely respectful in front of him. I couldn’t see any of them suggesting he had a touch of the Austin Powers about him. TB thought that was why he seemed to enjoy the banter with us, because he didn’t seem to have anyone there who really stood up to him and just had a laugh. On Iraq, it was clear they genuinely hadn’t decided what to do, or even whether to do anything at all.

TB called early to give me a few final changes for the speech. I could hear Bush rushing him in the background. They went off to church, which was a three-hour round trip. We both reckoned Bush had been
quite a lad in his youth, both on the booze and the birds front. But they got on, there was no doubt about that, and they were both people not afraid to face down critics. They both seemed to view Iraq and Saddam as an issue of conviction. We finished the speech, which was now strong, putting in a few final changes strengthening the references to the UN and also strengthening the use of the word ‘justified’ when talking about regime change. Most of the world’s media was on the Middle East, but our lot would be on Iraq because that was the better political story.

The big thing was trying to get the peace process going again but Bush was very down on both Arafat and [Ariel] Sharon, who he had bollocked in a phone call yesterday. The drive down to the speech venue was much more scenic, including past some of the most incredible wild flowers any of us had ever seen. TB was speaking at the [George] Bush Library [at College Station, Texas]. While we waited for everyone to gather, I did a note to him on the advisability of doing a statement to the Commons on Wednesday. He was concerned it was setting a precedent that he would do one every time he went abroad and we were being pushed to do things no other prime minister would do. But I tried to push the positive reasons. He was the only leader really plugged into Bush and able to exert influence. He was far better than Bush at empathy and explanation. And it was important that we set this out as British foreign policy not theirs, and Parliament was the best place to do that.