Time Machine: When Putin Warned Bush About Dangers of Regime Change
Irony abounds in newly unearthed telephone call on eve of US invasion of Iraq that records Putin warning Bush about violating UN charter and “international law.”
As President George W. Bush was preparing to invade Iraq in March, 2003, he received a stern warning from a foreign leader that what he was about to do was a “significant” violation of the United Nations charter and international law.
It was a powerful message that resonates today as another U.S. president, Donald Trump, vows to “run” Venezuela and take over Greenland—by force, if necessary, according to his press secretary.
But the message to Bush came from about the last person in the world you would expect to be cautioning anyone about restraint.
“You said that the goal was regime change,” Russian president Vladimir Putin told Bush in a March 18, 2003 telephone call, a transcript of which was just declassified and posted Wednesday by the non-profit National Security Archive.
