The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
to go into
Iraq, we had to have a good legal basis for doing so, which
obviously a
second
resolution would have completely nailed.”198
“… that
wasn’t new, it was something which I had told the Prime Minister
that I would
need at the
end of the day, long before March. This is back in January when
we
started to
commit our forces out there, and, as you say, I received that
assurance.
This was an
important issue, particularly because of the speculation in the
press
about the
legality or otherwise and, as far as I was concerned particularly
for my
constituency,
in other words, soldiers, sailors and airmen and their families had
to be
told that
what they were doing was legal. So it formed the first line of my
Operational
Directive
which I signed on 20 March, and it was important for me just to
have a
one-liner,
because that was what was required, as far as I was concerned, from
the
Government
Law Officer, which, as you say, I received.”199
592.
The background
to Lord Goldsmith’s response and the subsequent
discussions
on the
legal basis for military action are addressed in Section
5.
593.
Following
Mr Blair’s meeting, the MOD provided details of the military
plan
and
proposed that commanders should be given discretion to make
further
contributions
outside the agreed UK AO.
594.
Mr Watkins
sent Sir David Manning an outline of the military plan for Iraq
and
advice on
the decisions needed on the development of the UK’s
role.200
“The US
Concept of Operations can achieve a conventional military
defeat,
and the use
of force to secure regime change offers the best route to
achieve
Iraq’s
disarmament consistent with the principle of the minimum use of
force
… Overall,
the plan represents a robust basis for the committal of UK
forces.
“We should
confirm to the US our willingness – subject to decisions
by
UK
commanders at the time – to contribute specialist capabilities
(NBC,
engineering
and bridging) to facilitate their advance from the South, and
to
a limited
expansion northwards of our Area of Operations during the
conflict
phase: we
need to confirm this by mid-week. We should continue to
explore
other
options for contributing to the US decisive main effort, but
without
commitment
at this stage.
198
Public
hearing, 3 December 2009, page 82.
199
Public
hearing, 3 December 2009, pages 88-89.
200
Letter
Watkins to Manning, 11 March 2003, ‘Iraq: the Military
Plan’.
480