Earlier Downing Street Memo Incriminates

CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL

British Embassy Washington

From the Ambassador
Christopher Meyer KCMG

18 March 2002

Sir David Manning KCMG, No 10 Downing Street

IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN: CONVERSATION WITH WOLFOWITZ

1. Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense,
came to Sunday lunch on 17 March.

2. On Iraq I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used with Condi Rice last week, We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option. It would be a tough sell for us domestically, and probably tougher elsewhere in Europe. The US could go it alone if it wanted to.

But if it wanted to act with partners, there had to be a strategy for building support for military action against Saddam. I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN SCRs and the critical importance of the MEPP as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy. If all this could be accomplished skilfully, we were fairly confident that a number of countries would come on board....