On 11 September 2001, as he faced incalculable losses after the terrorist attacks that day, US President George W. Bush made a call to his greatest international ally: British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
18 months later, Bush and Blair led an international coalition into a war that many didn’t want to fight.
In The Fault Line: Bush, Blair and Iraq, an eight part podcast series, David Dimbleby investigates those crucial 18 months between September 2001 and March 2003.
The Iraq War was and still is a litmus test. Were you for it or were you against it? It’s also a lesson about how the institutions that are meant to serve us can fail.
Many now think we live in an age of misinformation and lies. Was the seed of mistrust sown 17 years ago? Taken root and spread? Mistrust in the political class that drove the war, in those parts of the media that weren’t asking enough questions and the intelligence services that got it so wrong.
How did we get to a war in Iraq? Speaking to spies, weapon inspectors, reporters and politicians who led us there, David Dimbleby unpicks the story week by week.
A story of secret meetings behind closed doors, of the journalists trying to establish the facts and CIA Agents seeking the truth. But ultimately, it’s the story of two men who politically could have been enemies but instead became the closest of friends. Two men who risked it all, putting their careers and reputations on the line.
The series includes interviews with former Prime Minister Tony Blair, former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, former Director of Communications for Tony Blair – Alistair Campbell, former CIA agent Bill Murray and many more.
David Dimbleby says: “This is not about the rights and wrongs of the war on Saddam’s Iraq. It is about how the decision was taken to go to war, a war which relied on the assumption that Saddam was concealing weapons of mass destruction and had to be deposed.
“It is about the mixed messages that intelligence agencies were receiving and passing on to the White House and how only those which supported the case for war were being believed. And it is about how President Bush was able to persuade Tony Blair to back him: politics under pressure at the highest level. How and why a disastrous war was fought.”
The Fault Line: Bush, Blair and Iraq is available weekly from Tuesday 29 September on Apple, Spotify, Acast and all podcast providers.