The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
“The key
thing was to get the right players together so you could have a
proper,
frank
discussion and take the decisions necessary …”70
154.
Sir Kevin
Tebbit wrote to Mr Hoon on 3 July setting out his concerns
about
the absence
of a strategic framework for the military plan and the dilemma
for
the UK
that being drawn into US planning potentially posed.
155.
Sir Kevin
concluded that the UK could not count on a military
campaign
being
unlikely or, if the US went ahead, that the UK could avoid being
linked to
the campaign.
156.
Sir Kevin
advised that a “credible political plan”, which addressed
the
conditions
for UK participation and moved American planning into
acceptable
channels
and slowed it down, was needed.
157.
Having seen a
draft of Mr Watkins’ letter to No.10, Sir Kevin Tebbit wrote
to
Mr Hoon
on 3 July setting out a number of concerns.71
“While I
have no objection to … the course of action proposed I think we
should be
under no
illusions about the extent of the stakes as presented, or the need
to raise
our
Whitehall game, politically, diplomatically, financially as well as
militarily if we
are to
proceed further. This is not to say that I do not support the idea
of engaging in
planning …
nor even that we should not agree to participate in an operation
against
Iraq if the
conditions are acceptable, but the task ahead is
formidable.
“… The
picture … is of a military plan being worked up in a policy vacuum,
with
no
strategic framework which paves the way; in terms of rationale,
preparation of
public
opinion through threat assessments, WMD risks and the like, or
creation of
the legal
base; and no clearly defined end state, in terms of successor
government
and
relations with the Arab world. There will, I suspect, be a natural
tendency for
Ministerial
colleagues … to run a mile from what may appear at first (and
second)
sight to be
a harebrained scheme with all sorts of costs and risks
attached.
“Ministers
will need to be helped over that hump. It may be that an Iraq
campaign
is unlikely
to happen, given the problems … But we certainly cannot count on
that
or that we
could avoid being linked to a US military campaign if it did happen
…
I do not
think it is a responsible option for us to let matters run without
greater active
engagement
designed seriously to influence US conceptual as well as
operational
thinking,
albeit at the risk that we could end up converting an unviable plan
into
a credible
one.
70
Public
hearing, 29 January 2010, pages 224-226.
71
Minute
Tebbit to Secretary of State [MOD], 3 July 2002,
‘Iraq’.
30