6.2 |
Military planning for the invasion, January to March
2003
I provided
him with that. Frankly I was quite embarrassed to see the thing on
file
because it
was intended purely as an aide memoire for him
personally.”96
267.
Asked if he
could provide a short note of his recollection of the contents of
his
manuscript
note, Sir Kevin told the Inquiry:
“… I think
it is very difficult, because I couldn’t do it honestly, I don’t
think.”
“… I did
worry we were walking into something without thinking carefully
about it …
“… [M]y
advice was saying … in the circumstances, we have got to a stage
where
it is
better all round for us to continue, but continue to push hard for
our conditions,
rather than
to pull out, because I couldn’t think of a good reason for pulling
out in
the
circumstances we were in, because we hadn’t exhausted the track, we
hadn’t
… given up
trying to bring allies with us, trying to build coalitions, trying
to achieve
success
through the diplomatic route, and therefore there was no grounds,
in my
view, for
pulling out. Were we to think of doing so, there could be lots of
damage …
to our
bilateral relationship with the Americans.
“That
doesn’t mean to say that if we decided in March 2002 we weren’t
going to
have
anything to do with this at all, there would be damage to our
relationship.
It would
have been much smaller, I think, at that stage. It was being at the
point
that we
were by late December, we would have needed very good reasons for
not
continuing,
and it didn’t seem to me at that stage that those reasons
existed.
“Nevertheless,
my main concern at that point was to provoke the Ministers to
have
a full
discussion, rather than simply to say the American relationship is
so important,
you should
just carry on regardless.”97
268.
Mr Hoon
told the Inquiry that he did not receive advice from Sir Kevin
Tebbit
about the
need for a Cabinet discussion.
269.
In a statement
for the Inquiry, Mr Hoon wrote that he:
“… was
never advised either formally or informally by … Sir Kevin Tebbit,
to the
effect that
there should be a discussion among Cabinet colleagues about
the
proposed UK
deployment to the South of Iraq.”98
270.
Referring to
Sir Kevin’s oral evidence in February and May 2010 about a
private
handwritten
note suggesting a Cabinet discussion, Mr Hoon stated:
“If he did
send such a note, I did not receive it. There is no record of it
anywhere.
Had I
received such a note … I would have marked it to say that it had
been read,
together
with any further comment or question I might have had … [I]t would
have
96
Private
hearing, 6 May 2010, pages 24-25.
97
Private
hearing, 6 May 2010, pages 25-26.
98
Statement,
2 April 2015, pages 4-5.
425