The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
245.
Sir Kevin
Tebbit wrote on his own copy of the document
“Rubbish!”125
246.
Asked about
his meeting with Mr Armitage and the fact that
Mr Armitage had been
told that
Mr Blair had discussed with President Bush at Crawford the
question of a
British
armoured division taking part in the invasion, Sir David
Manning told the Inquiry:
“Yes I
didn’t know that.”126
247.
Asked, in the
context of an offer of a division, whether the military planners
were
getting
ahead of the policy, Sir David Manning told the Inquiry that
he was “surprised
they had
said that”. It “didn’t seem logical”; Mr Blair had refused in
July to indicate what
the
military contribution might be.127
248.
Lord Boyce
told the Inquiry: “Let me absolutely assure you that no‑one
was
authorised
to make such an offer. In fact, quite the
contrary.”128
He added:
“we were
unable to
find out who this person was. So I don’t believe there was such a
person.”
249.
Two key
strands of MOD thinking had clearly emerged by the end
of
May 2002.
250.
First, work
on options in the MOD focused on identifying the
maximum
contribution
the UK could make to any US‑led operation in Iraq, even though
the
UK was
still unsure about the objectives and validity of the plan, the
legal basis
for action
or the precise role the UK would play.
251.
Second, the
desire to secure “strategic influence” across all
environments
of a
military campaign.
252.
The record of
Mr Blair’s meeting with the Chiefs of Staff on 21 May, when a
range
of wider
defence issues was discussed, noted on Iraq: “The two main
questions were:
Do the US
have a sensible concept? If so how could the UK
contribute?”129
253.
A paper
produced by the SPG on 24 May, ‘Contingency Thinking:
Force
Generation
and Deployment for the Gulf’, was sent to the Chiefs of Staff and a
limited
number of
named MOD addressees.130
254.
The aim of the
paper was to provide sufficient information:
“… to judge
what the UK’s maximum level of commitment could be in the event of
a
contingent
operation against Iraq, together with appropriate costs and
timings, and
to provide
data on other smaller coherent force packages as a
comparator.”
125
Manuscript
comment Tebbit and Hoon on Minute
Shirreff to APS/Secretary of State [MOD], 31 May 2002,
‘David
Manning’s visit to Washington 17 May – Iraq’.
126
Private
hearing, 24 June 2010, page 38.
127
Private
hearing, 24 June 2010, page 40.
128
Public
hearing, 27 January 2011, pages 19‑20.
129
Note
Rycroft, 21 May 2002, ‘Prime Minister’s Meeting with Chiefs of
Staff’.
130
Paper
[SPG], 24 May 2002, ‘Contingency Thinking: Force Generation and
Deployment for the Gulf’.
212