LONDON -- U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have taken a "shoulder-to-shoulder" stance on Iraq -- literally. On April 6, 2002, the two leaders emerged from four hours of talks at the president's Texas ranch, stood side by side for the cameras and declared their undying opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime.
The American-British special relationship over Iraq has had its ups and downs -- most notably in August 2002, when Blair annoyed Washington hawks by calling for weapons inspections before invasions. But Downing Street denied that these were serious disagreements, issuing a statement that said Britain and America are in "100 percent agreement" that Iraq must be "dealt with." In his keynote speech to a Labour Party conference in October 2002, Blair declared, "I believe in this British-American alliance . . . and I will fight long and hard to maintain it."
But for all the declared unity over Iraq, there's one little thing America and Britain disagree on: whether Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party regime has links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Behind the claims of "common purpose" and "unity of mission," U.S. and U.K. officials are at loggerheads over the Bush administration's allegation that Hussein and bin Laden are in cahoots.
Leading Bush officials have made claims of a Hussein-bin Laden link central to their justifications for invading Iraq. "There clearly are contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in September, though she didn't provide any evidence for these "contacts," much less documentation. Asked whether there is a link between Hussein and bin Laden, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld replied, "I have no desire to go beyond saying the answer is 'yes.' "
President Bush has gone beyond saying "yes," alleging that Hussein is using al-Qaeda as a private army. "The danger is that al-Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world," Bush has said, his paranoia clearly working overtime. After the horrific Bali bombings in October, Bush pointed the finger of blame at the alleged Hussein-bin Laden network. "We need to think about Saddam using al-Qaeda to do his dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind," he said. "This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al-Qaeda as a forward army."
British officials could not disagree more. Publicly, Blair's ministers choose to say little about America's claims of a Hussein-bin Laden love-in, instead focusing their pro-war arguments on Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction and his human-rights abuses. Privately, however, British officials and experts ridicule American claims of a link, arguing that nothing is less likely than Hussein having contacts with bin Laden.
"Quite the opposite," said one British official when asked by The Guardian whether Iraq and al-Qaeda could possibly be working together. Indeed, the article confidently asserted, "British intelligence agencies are dismissing claims by the Bush administration that there are links between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network."
Free from the constraints of officialdom, Alex Standish, the British editor of the military magazine Jane's Intelligence Digest, is able to go one better. "They are diametrically opposed," he said. "Absolutely, diametrically opposed. I can't see any reason why Saddam, coming from an Arab nationalist and fairly secular background, would have any interest in supporting an extremist religious ideology, which is ultimately opposed to everything he has ever stood for."
Bush, of course, would beg to differ, going so far as to say he "can't distinguish between the two -- because they're both equally as bad and equally as evil and equally as destructive." Where British officials see Iraq and al-Qaeda as polar opposites, Bush and his supporters see an "evil mass," with Hussein and bin Laden plotting America's downfall together.
As a result of these disagreements between the British and American camps, the Bush and Blair governments sometimes seem to be plotting action against very different regimes. The Bush administration has identified a regime that is dangerously close to al-Qaeda, with plans to spread terror around the world; the Blair government sees a regime that has little to do with al-Qaeda but that poses a big threat to its own people.
How can Britain and the United States disagree so profoundly on this aspect of Hussein's regime -- on its intentions and capabilities -- yet still maintain a unified front? The behind-the-scenes disagreements over one of the United States' central allegations against Hussein don't seem to have made any impact on Britain and America's "shoulder-to-shoulder" stance. Why not? Because Bush and Blair's public declarations about Iraq have little to do with what is happening inside Iraq itself. They may be driven less by hard evidence of Hussein's weapons, terrorism or torture than by a desire to strut Britain and the United States' moral superiority on the international stage.
But Bush and Blair's proud declarations about standing up to "evil Saddam" exist in a parallel universe to actual evidence of Iraqi wrongdoing. And Bush and Blair aren't about to let anything such as facts or profound disagreements between their officials stand in the way of their worldly ambitions. That is why -- even as the British mock the Bush administration behind its back and doubt the United States' premise for invading Iraq -- Bush and Blair will no doubt continue to stand "shoulder-to-shoulder."
Brendan O'Neill is a London-based journalist and assistant editor of spiked.
