The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
173.
The Treasury
told the Inquiry that Mr Brown decided not to write to the
MOD.78
174.
Mr Nye’s
advice and Mr Brown’s involvement in discussions on the costs
of
operations
in Iraq are addressed in Section 13.
175.
Mr Straw
wrote to Mr Blair, supporting the proposal for an early
Ministerial
meeting and
emphasising the need for a coherent strategy which assessed
the
political
and economic as well as military implications before action was
taken.
176.
Mr Straw
also referred to the need for the US to understand that the UK
was
serious
about its “conditions for UK involvement”.
177.
Mr Straw wrote
to Mr Blair on 8 July supporting Mr Hoon’s suggestion for an
early
“We are all
agreed that we must act to remove the threat posed by Iraqi
WMD.
If the US
decide that to do so requires military action then the UK will want
to support
them. But
this will be harder for us to do without serious US action to
address some
of the
lacunae in their plan, notably:
•
… no
strategic concept for the military plan and, in particular, no
thought
apparently
given to ‘day after’ scenarios … US military planning so far
has
taken place
in a vacuum;
•
weak
intelligence analysis and a quite unrealistic assumption that Iraqi
WMD
would be
easy to identify and destroy;
•
an
assumption that Kuwait would host a large scale US military effort
for
the 1-2
years probably necessary, that other Gulf states would
provide
necessary
support, and that Syria and Iran would sit quietly on the
sidelines;
•
no mention
of your three conditions for UK involvement, nor of
the
legal base.”
“Much of
what is required is covered by your three conditions for UK
involvement
(preparation
of public opinion, UN route exhausted, and some MEPP
improvement).
Regional
states in particular will want assurance that the US has thought
through the
‘day after’
questions before giving even tacit support. The support even of key
allies
such as
Kuwait cannot be counted on in the absence of some serious
ground-work
by the
US.
78
Email
Treasury to Inquiry, 26 February 2010, [untitled].
79
Minute
Straw to Prime Minister, 8 July 2002, ‘Iraq: Contingency
Planning’.
34