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3.1  |  Development of UK strategy and options, 9/11 to early January 2002
398.  General Franks visited Crawford on 28 December 2001 to brief President Bush on
Iraq.188 Other members of the national security team were linked by video to the briefing.
General Franks informed President Bush that the plan on the shelf required a six month
build up and 400,000 troops; he was looking at whether as a result of lessons from
Afghanistan fewer conventional ground forces would be needed. He had “envisioned a
fast invasion from Kuwait in the south, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in the west, and Turkey
in the north”.
399.  Secretary Rumsfeld recorded that General Franks’ plan called for “an invasion
force of 145,000 … which would be increased to 275,000 if and as needed”.189
400.  The report from the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction,
Hard Lessons, stated that the concept of operations briefed to President Bush had
been devised in four video conferences between Thanksgiving (22 November 2001)
and late December 2001. It focused chiefly on the combat phase and “anticipated
a rapid post war handoff to a provisional Iraqi government and a minimal continuing
military footprint”.190
401.  President Bush wrote that after the 28 December briefing he had “asked the team
to keep working on the plan”, while observing that:
“… we should remain optimistic that diplomacy and international pressure will
succeed in disarming the regime … But we cannot allow weapons of mass
destruction to fall into the hands of terrorists. I will not allow that to happen.”191
402.  General Franks wrote that he gave a further briefing on the developing plan
to President Bush and US Principals on 7 February 2002, in which he identified the
“optimum operational timing” as “December-mid-March” [2003].192
Developments in January 2002
403.  Following an inter-departmental meeting chaired by the Cabinet Office on
14 January 2002, Mr McKane reported to Sir David Manning that the UK continued to
push for the introduction of the Goods Review List by 30 May 2002 as authorised by
resolution 1382 (2001).193 The prospects for agreement on implementation of resolution
1284 (i.e. the return of weapons inspectors) were “slim”. There was a continued
discussion about whether the introduction of the GRL should take place before, or in
parallel with, clarification of what Iraq had to do to get sanctions suspended and the
regime which would be put in place thereafter.
188  Bush GW. Decision Points. Virgin Books, 2010.
189  Rumsfeld D. Known and Unknown: A Memoir. Sentinel, 2011.
190  Bowen SW Jr. Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. U.S. Government Printing Office,
2009.
191  Bush GW. Decision Points. Virgin Books, 2010.
192  Franks T & McConnell M. American Soldier. HarperCollins, 2004.
193  Minute McKane to Manning, 15 January 2002, ‘Iraq’.
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