Cover Story

A bittersweet birthday

18 March 2006

On 20 March, the Iraq conflict reaches its third anniversary. Con Coughlin defends the decision to invade, explores the impact of Blair on Bush’s second term — and reveals what Condoleezza Rice thinks of David Cameron

During Dr Rice’s recent visit to London, the Secretary of State broke off from her formal engagements to meet Mr Cameron. The new Conservative leader’s aides have been working hard to repair relations with the Bush administration, which banished Michael Howard from the White House for his ‘if I knew then what I know now’ sophistic justification for opposing the Iraq invasion.

With Blair firmly in the twilight of his premiership, Washington is keen to establish good relations with his potential successors, and in this spirit Dr Rice was keen to meet the ‘new Tony Blair’. But before securing him a coveted invitation to the Oval Office, she first wanted to establish that he was ‘sound’ on Iraq.

‘But he just didn’t come through,’ one of Dr Rice’s aides told me shortly after the meeting took place in an anteroom at the Savoy Hotel. ‘We were looking to him to make some kind of conciliatory gesture over Iraq, but he just wanted to sit on the fence. And that is not the kind of place we expect our allies to be.’

Con Coughlin is defence and security editor of the Daily Telegraph and the biographer of Saddam Hussein. His new book, American Ally: Tony Blair and the War on Terror, is published by Politico’s next month.