{"id":1548,"date":"2009-11-26T04:20:10","date_gmt":"2009-11-26T10:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=1548"},"modified":"2009-11-26T04:23:51","modified_gmt":"2009-11-26T10:23:51","slug":"iraq-inquiry-to-focus-on-bush-blair-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/iraq-inquiry-to-focus-on-bush-blair-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq inquiry to focus on Bush-Blair relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

UK-US relations in the run-up to the Iraq war are to come under scrutiny as ex-US Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer gives evidence to the war inquiry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Iraq<\/a>His evidence is expected to touch on the personal relationship between Tony Blair and former President Bush and the extent to which this influenced policy.<\/p>\n

The inquiry was told on Wednesday of reports days before the war that Iraq had dismantled its chemical weapons.<\/p>\n

But Foreign Office officials insisted the war was still justified.<\/p>\n

The inquiry is looking into UK involvement in Iraq between 2001 and 2009, with the first few weeks focusing on policy in the build-up to the 2003 US-led invasion.<\/p>\n

Sir Christopher, UK Ambassador to Washington between 1997 and 2003, will take centre stage on the third day of public hearings.<\/p>\n

Critics of the war claim that the US had already decided to topple Saddam Hussein in 2002 and that the UK had agreed to go along with this – claims both countries have denied.<\/p>\n

The reasons for going to war in Iraq – including the now discredited claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which could be used within 45 minutes of an order being given – remain a long-standing source of controversy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK-US relations in the run-up to the Iraq war are to come under scrutiny as ex-US Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer gives evidence to the war inquiry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,118,37],"tags":[2466,2456,2454,2458,2464,2457,2462,2460,2467,2469,260],"class_list":["post-1548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-hot","category-middle-east","tag-ambassador-sir-christopher-meyer","tag-bush-blair","tag-bush-blair-relationship","tag-christopher-meyer","tag-foreign-office","tag-george-bush","tag-saddam-hussein","tag-sir-christopher","tag-tony-blair","tag-tony-blair-george-bush","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}