Regime Change, the Prequel: In 1983, the US 'Pre-Emptively' Invaded Grenada. Sound familiar?: "Tawdry, vicious and ignorant, the invasion of Grenada differed from this year's war on Iraq in one important particular. A furious British prime minister did not hesitate to tell the US president he was wrong. In spite of her love-in with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher saw through the threadbare threat assessments which the US put up to justify the war. 'I am totally and utterly against communism and terrorism,' she thundered in a BBC interview. 'But if you are going to pronounce a new law that wherever communism reigns against the will of their people, the United States shall enter - then we are going to have really terrible wars in the world.'"

"The lesson for today is clear. When the US feels its vital interests are at stake abroad, whispers from a friend are unlikely to change things. Thatcher's colleague Christopher Soames put the point starkly in a House of Lords debate a few days after the invasion. "I hope her majesty's government will draw the conclusion from this sorry episode that perhaps the best way for the United Kingdom to bring influence to bear upon the decision-making process of the United States in the middle and latter parts of the 1980s will be off a European base. It is in strengthening that base and speaking with a European authority that we shall have much more influence over the US than through any special Anglo-Saxon influence that may or may not be left over from the mists of time," he declared."

Regime Change, the Prequel: In 1983, the US 'Pre-Emptively' Invaded Grenada. Sound familiar?: "Tawdry, vicious and ignorant, the invasion of Grenada differed from this year's war on Iraq in one important particular. A furious British prime minister did not hesitate to tell the US president he was wrong. In spite of her love-in with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher saw through the threadbare threat assessments which the US put up to justify the war. 'I am totally and utterly against communism and terrorism,' she thundered in a BBC interview. 'But if you are going to pronounce a new law that wherever communism reigns against the will of their people, the United States shall enter - then we are going to have really terrible wars in the world.'"

"The lesson for today is clear. When the US feels its vital interests are at stake abroad, whispers from a friend are unlikely to change things. Thatcher's colleague Christopher Soames put the point starkly in a House of Lords debate a few days after the invasion. "I hope her majesty's government will draw the conclusion from this sorry episode that perhaps the best way for the United Kingdom to bring influence to bear upon the decision-making process of the United States in the middle and latter parts of the 1980s will be off a European base. It is in strengthening that base and speaking with a European authority that we shall have much more influence over the US than through any special Anglo-Saxon influence that may or may not be left over from the mists of time," he declared."