[A-List] Britain/US split: Falklands

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

And just to underline the sense of weakness pervading throughout the pro-New Labour news media today, here's a timely revelation....


Crucial Falklands role played by US missiles

Nicholas Watt
Friday September 6, 2002
The Guardian

Margaret Thatcher would have lost the Falklands war in 1982 if America had failed to provide crucial missiles to bolster British air defences, according to an adviser to the former prime minister.

America, which angered the Thatcher government with its initially even-handed approach to the conflict, was believed to have provided little more than intelligence once Washington lost patience with the Argentinians.

But British and American officials say in the BBC documentary that Washington provided the latest Sidewinder missiles at 48 hours' notice after the British task force came under fire.

Lord Renwick, a senior diplomat in the British embassy in Washington, who went on to become ambassador, told the programme: "My role was to go along to the Pentagon and ask them for 105 Sidewinder missiles. These were the very latest version, which were far more accurate than the earlier versions and we wanted them delivered within 48 hours. That meant stripping part of the frontline US air force of those missiles and sending them to the South Atlantic."

Lord Powell of Bayswater, Lady Thatcher's key foreign affairs adviser, said that Britain would have lost the war without such assistance.

His remarks were echoed by Richard Perle, an assistant US defence secretary at the time, who said: "Britain would probably have lost the war without American assistance. That's how significant it was."

Tony Blair indicates in the programme that he has forgotten the five pledges which were the defining feature of Labour's 1997 election campaign.

Recalling Bill Clinton's address to the British cabinet shortly after the election, Mr Blair said that ministers were impressed that the former president was able to reel off the pledges, "whatever they are".

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NOTE: In his memoirs, former Defence Secretary John Nott also details how much help Thatcher and co. got from Mitterand's government in France. Yup, she sure made Britain grate again.