Timeline: Road to War
Updated on 02 February 2006
Three crucial months at the beginning of 2003...
17 January 2003
US cranks up war talk Secretary of State Colin Powell declares: "We believe a persuasive case will be there at the end of the month that Iraq is not cooperating."
30 January 2003
Blair calls for European unity On a whistle-stop tour of the continent - en route to crisis talks in America - the PM calls for Europe to rally around a second UN resolution approving military action. Blair and seven other European leaders co-sign a newspaper article to that effect.
31 January 2003
Blair and Bush meet in Washington According to documents now seen by Channel 4 News, the PM assured the President he was prepared to to join an invasion of Iraq without a second resolution. More...
5 February 2003
Powell presents to UN US Secretary of State offers evidence of Iraqi WMD programmes to UN Security Council.
14 February 2003
Weapons' Inspectors Report Dr Hans Blix delivers his report to the UN in New York making coded plea for more time.
15 February 2003
Anti-war protests in London Protestors claim there were two million there, the police say it was nearer 750,000. Either way it was the biggest peace protest in British history. More...
24 February 2003
US and Britain table new UN resolution France and Germany say they will veto it.
26 February 2003
Parliamentary vote on UN resolution Tony Blair suffers his biggest back-bench rebellion to date.
7 March 2003
Blair gets legal advice Attorney General Lord Godlsmith privately gives his legal advice to the PM about going to war without a second UN resolution. It took more that two years for a summary of this advice to be disclosed. More...
11 March 2003
Rumsfeld: 'We can go it alone' Defence Secretary contemplates war without America's closest ally, Britain.
16 March 2003
Blair: 'Moment of Truth' PM and George Bush emerge from meeting with the Spanish Prime Minister effectively giving the United Nations 24 hours to back a US-British attack on Iraq - or watch from the sidelines.
17 March 2003
Robin Cook resigns In his resignation speech to the House, the outgoing Foreign Secretary says "Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction". More...
Meanwhile, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith argues that the various UN Resolutions including 1441 add up to a sanction for war.
18 March 2003
Tony Blair makes war pitch In an eve of war speech to the Commons, the PM declares: "We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years - contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence - Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd." More...
20 March 2003
Attack on Iraq begins More...
