The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
712.
In September
2004, Gen Walker received a well‑argued piece of advice
from
Lt Gen McColl
which made clear that the conditions on which decisions on
drawdown
were to be
based were unlikely to be met in the near future. Despite the
warnings in
Lt
Gen McColl’s paper and his advice that “the time is right for
the consideration of the
substantive
issues”,248
the Chiefs
of Staff, chaired by Gen Walker, declined to
engage
in a
substantive review of UK options.
713.
The Inquiry
recognises that the scale of the resources which the UK might
have
deployed to
deal with the issues was substantially less than the US could bring
to bear.
It is
possible that the UK may not have been able to make a real
difference, when the
key
strategic change that might have affected the outcome was the
deployment of a
much larger
force. But proper consideration ought to have been given to what
options
were
available, including for the deployment of additional personnel.
Mr Straw raised
the need
for such a debate with Mr Blair in October.
714.
The UK had
consistently resisted US requests to deploy additional
personnel,
which Lt
Gen McColl described as having “chipped away at the US/UK
relationship”,249
but in
October it was agreed that the Black Watch would be deployed to
North Babil
for 30 days
to backfill US forces needed for operations in Fallujah.
Approximately
350 personnel
from 1st Battalion, the Royal Highland Fusiliers were also deployed
to
Iraq to
provide additional security across MND(SE) during the election
period in January
and
February 2005. The UK remained reluctant to commit any further
forces in the longer
term: when
Dutch forces withdrew from Muthanna province, the UK instead
redeployed
forces from
elsewhere in MND(SE) plus a small amount of additional logistic
support.
715.
In January
2005, Lt Gen Fry produced a thoughtful and realistic
assessment of the
prospects
for security in Iraq, observing that “we are not on track to
deliver the Steady
State
Criteria (SSC) before the UN mandate expires, or even shortly
thereafter”.250
He
judged that
“only additional military effort by the MNF‑I [Multi‑National Force
– Iraq] as
a whole”
might be able to get the campaign back on track. Lt Gen Fry
identified three
possible
courses of action for the UK: increasing the UK scale of effort,
maintaining the
status quo
or, if it were judged that the campaign was irretrievable,
accepting failure and
seeking to
mitigate UK liability.
716.
The Inquiry
endorses Lt Gen Fry’s assessment of the options open to the
UK
at this
point and considers that full and proper consideration should have
been given
to each
option by DOP.
717.
In his advice
to Mr Blair on 21 January, Gen Walker did not expose
the
assessment made
by Lt Gen Fry that only additional military effort by the
MNF‑I might
be able
to get the campaign back on track.
248
Minute
McColl to CDS and CJO, 26 September 2004, ‘Report 130 of 26 Sep
04’.
249
Report
McColl to CDS and CJO, 20 October 2004, ‘SBMR‑I Hauldown Report –
Lt Gen McColl’.
250
Minute
DCDS(C) to APS 2/SofS [MOD], 11 January 2005, ‘Iraq 2005 – a UK MOD
perspective’.
98