The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
794.
Mr Hoon told
the Inquiry that the campaign was “very much about creating
an
effect on
the ground and making clear to the Iraqi people that our target was
Saddam
Hussein and
his regime, rather than … a more conventional military attack on
the
795.
Mr Hoon said
that “in the early phase” he saw “pretty much every target that
was
going to be
attacked” but did not know whether the attack would actually take
place.275
796.
Asked about
lessons learned in relation to targeting, Mr Hoon told the
Inquiry
that he
learned how accurate modern weapons were because he had initially
been
“fairly
cautious” in his approach to targeting:
“If I was
told that there was a civilian facility alongside a military one,
we had quite
a debate.
Saddam Hussein had some – at least 50 palaces located around
the
country
that he would move from one to the other, and we had quite a debate
about,
if we hit
one of these targets, what about the people who worked there? Were
they
necessarily
part of the regime?”276
797.
Lord Goldsmith
told the Inquiry that he was satisfied with the assurances
he
received
about targeting issues.277
He
described how he approached it with care, asked
questions,
and was satisfied about the basis of the decisions which had been
made.
798.
DSF1 told the
Inquiry that AM Burridge had the same delegated authority
for
collateral
damage as the US Secretary of Defense, and that the UK system
had
delegated
“a lot more authority” to the NCC than the US had.278
799.
Air Chief
Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, UK Air Contingent Commander in
2003,
was asked
if he had been satisfied with the delegations afforded to
commanders for
targeting.
He told the Inquiry:
“I think we
made very significant progress in the run-up to the second Gulf
War
building on
the experience we had had during the No-Fly Zones, the first Gulf
War,
and the
Secretary of State … realised that the only way to maintain the
tempo of
the
campaign was to delegate responsibility down to the lowest possible
level.
So I had a
delegation. Brian Burridge had a delegation, and I thought it
worked very
effectively,
and we cleared a lot of targets before the campaign even
started.”279
800.
Lord Boyce
told the Inquiry:
“We had a
differing view from the Americans and the Americans came more to
our
way in
terms of the proportionality, legality, collateral damage and all
those sorts of
274
Public
hearing, 19 January 2010, page 76.
275
Public
hearing, 19 January 2010, pages 77-78.
276
Public
hearing, 19 January 2010, page 79.
277
Public
hearing, 27 January 2010, pages 222-223.
278
Private
hearing DSF1, page 21.
279
Public
hearing, 18 January 2011, page 12.
514