3.2 |
Development of UK strategy and options, January to April 2002 –
“axis of evil” to Crawford
138.
Sir David
Manning sent the letter to Mr Blair, commenting:
“Interesting
account of the latest US thinking. Much as expected:
[…]”46
“I still
don’t see how the military option will work, but I guess there will
be an
140.
Sir Richard
Dearlove’s letter was also shown to Mr Straw and Sir Richard
Wilson.
141.
Sir Richard
Dearlove briefed Mr Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
on
4 March.
The discussion included the possibility of the US taking “serious
military action”
142.
In his memoir,
published in 2007, Mr George Tenet, the Director of
Central
Intelligence,
described how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had concluded
that
American
“boots on the ground” would be needed to remove Saddam
Hussein.49
143.
Mr Tenet
recorded that a new Head of the Iraq Operations Group inside the
CIA
Directorate
of Operations had been appointed in August 2001 who
had:
“…
conducted a review of the lessons learned from our long and
not-too-happy
history of
running operations against Iraq since …1991. The principal message
…
from the
review was that Saddam was not going to be removed via covert
action
alone. As
much as some would wish for … some quick, easy, and cheap solution
to
regime
change in Iraq – it was not going to happen.”
144.
Mr Tenet added
that the CIA’s “analysis concluded that Saddam was too
deeply
entrenched
and had too many layers of security around him for there to be an
easy way
to remove
him”; and the Iraqi reaction was “always” that: “If you are serious
about this,
we want to
see American boots on the ground.”
145.
Mr Tenet wrote
that his own “aversion to a CIA go-it-alone strategy was based
on
our
estimate of the chance of success (slim to none)” and his belief
that the CIA “plate
was already
overflowing with missions in the war on terrorism”.
146.
Mr Tenet
observed that even if such action “managed to take Saddam out,
the
beneficiary
was likely to have been another Sunni general no better that the
man he
replaced”.
That “would not have been consistent with the Administration’s
intent that
a new
Iraq might serve as a beacon of democracy in the Middle
East”.
46
Manuscript
comment Manning to Prime Minister, 27 February 2002, on Letter C to
Manning,
26 February
2002, ‘US Policy on Iraq’.
47
Manuscript
comment Blair to Manning on Letter C to Manning, 26 February 2002,
‘US Policy on Iraq’.
48
SIS record,
6 March 2003.
49
Tenet G
& Harlow B. At the
Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA.
HarperPress, 2007.
411