The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
720.
On 26
September, Lt Gen Pigott wrote to Lt Gen Reith
with guidance to
“summarise
the current baseline on … options and to flag up the key issues”,
on which
addressees
and their staff could draw on in discussion with US
contacts.287
721.
Lt Gen Pigott
cautioned that aftermath and “Home Base” requirements were
still
to be
addressed and “could impact on the final shape” of the force
packages he was
describing.
722.
Lt Gen Pigott
identified that there was:
“… much
work to be done if there is to be any
prospect of
a significant UK Land
option from
the North within current time windows … Until we have a much
better
feel for
all the factors … we should be very cautious of giving US
Commanders the
impression
that we can deliver something which events, most of them outside
our
control,
simply preclude.”
723.
Lt Gen Pigott
concluded:
“Package 3
must at the moment have considerable caveats, and every effort
must
be made to
dampen expectations that it can be delivered.”
724.
Sir Kevin
Tebbit told the Inquiry:
“It was
indeed decided that we would not expose the full large‑scale option
to the US
at that
point because of concerns about the UN process, because … lack of
clarity
…
persisted, as to whether the Turks would actually provide the
necessary facilities
for the
northern option which was the one mainly under
consideration.”288
725.
Lord Boyce
initially told the Inquiry:
“I think
that Package 2 would have disappeared as being a favoured option in
about
September,
because the large‑scale option was obviously more difficult to
prepare,
so our
focus was on that.”289
726.
Asked whether
he was aware of the size of the UK contribution that was on
the
table in
September 2002, Lord Boyce subsequently told the
Inquiry:
“Package 2
was on the table then. No authorisation had been given by
the
Prime Minister
or Defence Secretary to say that we could offer anything more
than
that. In
fact, we were explicitly not saying that we were prepared to make
available
any land
commitment, let alone a division commitment.”290
287
Minute
DCDS(C) to CJO, 26 September 2002, ‘Iraq – Potential Scale of UK
Force Contribution for Use
in UK/US
Contingency Planning’.
288
Public
hearing, 3 December 2009, page 36.
289
Public
hearing, 3 December 2009, page 35.
290
Public
hearing, 27 January 2011, pages 22‑23.
282