The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
misjudgement
that had fuelled international criticism, particularly from key
allies such as
Turkey and
Saudi Arabia:
“By
trailing a full-scale live briefing once the operation was under
way, they [the
Pentagon]
fuelled media hype and speculation that this was a major change in
our
military
posture and, possibly, a repeat of Operation Desert Fox … The
Foreign
Secretary
[Mr Cook] is also concerned that while we have emphasised that
the
operation
had been solely to protect our pilots, President Bush took the line
that
the primary
aim of the attack was to send a message to the Iraqi regime. This
is
unhelpful
from both a presentational and legal point of
view.”110
200.
In her memoir,
Dr Rice wrote that, although she had been briefed on the
operation
in advance,
she had not appreciated the scale and nature of the
attack.111
The
operation
had
coincided with – and disrupted – President Bush’s first meeting
with President
Vicente Fox
of Mexico. Dr Rice wrote that the reaction to the attack in the US
media had
been
positive, including comments that the attacks had “sent a timely
signal” to Iraq that
the new US
Administration would “not shy away from using force to contain any
new
Iraqi
military threat”.
201.
Mr Webb told
the Inquiry:
“I don’t
think we [the UK Government] did a very good job of explaining what
was
going on,
in public. We certainly probably didn’t help … the new US
Administration to
do a very
good job of explaining it …
“… what it
looked like from the point of view of people … particularly in the
region,
was that
suddenly, we [the US and UK] pushed the campaign north, we were
up
around
Baghdad and it appeared something had happened and was that
presaging
something
they … had been reading about, regime change.”112
202.
Sir William
Patey accepted that there was a risk of
misinterpretation:
“I think
when the MOD first proposed this operation, there was really the
odd
frisson in
the Foreign Office, not because of its legality … We were worried
[that]
… the scale
of the operation could be misinterpreted. Here we had a new
American
Administration
coming in that at least had a history of a more aggressive
stance
towards
[Iraq] …
“So I think
in the Foreign Office we were worried that this might be
misinterpreted as
a sort of
military assault on Iraq, and that was not the
intention.”113
110
Minute FCO
[junior official] to Patey, 27 February 2001, ‘Iraq: NFZs:
RO4’.
111 Rice
C. No Higher
Honour: A Memoir of My Years in Washington. Simon
& Schuster, 2011.
112
Public
hearing, 24 November 2009, page 142.
113
Public
hearing, 24 November 2009, pages 143-144.
230