Excellent investigative reporting from The Independent:
"A secret plan to foster an internal coup against Saddam Hussein was drawn up by the Government two years before the invasion of Iraq, The Independent can reveal.
Whitehall officials drafted the "contract with the Iraqi people" as a way of signalling to dissenters in Iraq that an overthrow of Saddam would be supported by Britain. It promised aid, oil contracts, debt cancellations and trade deals once the dictator had been removed. Tony Blair's team saw it as a way of creating regime change in Iraq even before the 9/11 attack on New York.
The document, headed "confidential UK/US eyes", was finalised on 11 June 2001 and approved by ministers. It has not been published by the Iraq inquiry but a copy has been obtained by The Independent and can be revealed for the first time today. It states: "We want to work with an Iraq which respects the rights of its people, lives at peace with its neighbours and which observes international law."
You read that right, pre-911. So the attacks of September 11, 2001 changed only one thing: power, endless amounts of it. This is the worst kind of opportunism, naked, and obscene in the exploitation of our tragedy. Worse still, the invasion of Iraq is a war crime. Do you feel safer now? We planned to attack a nation before September 11, 2001 - planned and enacted that plan. Safer yet?
