Reply #18: Or, as Blair said a week or so before the London attack [View All]

[bigtree]

Iraq was a "line in the sand" after 9-11, a show of force to bolster Bush and Blair's weak image after the bombing.

For Prime Minister Tony Blair, the road to Iraq started with 9/11. The British leader said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press that the attacks on U.S. soil fundamentally changed "the balance of risk" in the world, sharing President Bush's view that the tragedy had made a robust show of force an urgent priority.

The attacks, he said, made it necessary to "draw a line in the sand here, and the country to do it with was Iraq because they were in breach of U.N. resolutions going back over many years."

Sitting on a stone terrace overlooking the garden of his Downing Street residence, Blair reflected on how Sept. 11 convinced him of the need for a new approach to the threat of international terror.

"9/11 changed the whole picture for me, it changed the politics of how we dealt with the threat," he said.

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BLAIR_INTERVIEW?SITE=APWEB&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-06-30-05-40-05