MOSCOW (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko — Last week, declassified correspondence from former US Secretary of State Colin Powell revealed that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President George W. Bush agreed on a joint military action against then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a year before the Iraq War started.
"I doubt the balance of power has shifted hugely in the diplomatic relationship between the UK and the USA since then — as we have seen, the UK is only too happy to go along with the American line on the subjects of Syria and Ukraine," Annie Machon, a former MI5 officer, said.
In correspondence dated April 2002, published by the Daily Mail, Powell told the president that Blair stood by Bush on Iraq and would continue to do so when the US moved forward with its war on terrorism.
"This has provided the proof to what many of us in the UK long suspected and what the former UK Ambassador to the USA, Sir Christopher Meyer, hinted at in his autobiography — that a deal was indeed done behind closed doors between Bush and Blair in 2002," Machon said.
The former intelligence officer added that false claims of weapons of mass destruction, and false intelligence that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium from Niger "allowed Blair to sell the case for war to a credulous public."
The United Kingdom was part of a US-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003, without a UN mandate, after falsely accusing Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction.
