6.4 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, mid-2001
to January 2003
225.
On 5 June,
Mr Blair and Secretary Rumsfeld agreed that the future of
Iraq
would be an
important issue for the international coalition.
226.
Secretary
Rumsfeld visited London for talks with Mr Blair and Mr Hoon on 5
June.
Mr Blair
expressed concern about the possible unintended consequences of any
military
action. He
and Secretary Rumsfeld agreed that the future of Iraq would be an
important
issue for
the international coalition.127
227.
On 14 June, Mr
Chaplin visited Washington with Mr Charles Gray, the Head
of
MED.128
The British
Embassy reported that US interlocutors from the NSC and
State
Department
had confirmed that the US was “pressing ahead with trying to
prepare the
Iraqi
opposition for regime change” and that Congressional funding had
been agreed
for the
State Department’s Future of Iraq Project (see Box below), a series
of working
groups
under Iraqi opposition ownership to look into issues of governance
after Saddam
Hussein’s
departure.
228.
In response to
a US suggestion that successful regime change depended
on
a clear
strategy for the day after, Mr Chaplin proposed that the UK and US
should
“exchange
views on scenarios”.
229.
That exchange
took place in Washington on 6 November and is described
later
in this
section.
In October
2001, the US State Department began work on what became known as
the
Future of
Iraq Project.129
The project
was launched publicly in early 2002. It involved a
series of
working groups of Iraqi exiles and officials from the State
Department, each
looking at
an area of importance to Iraq’s future, including justice,
education, the economy,
infrastructure,
the environment and reform of government
institutions.130
The
objective was
to expand
the scope of US post-war planning and provide a common focus for
competing
exile
groups.
The Future
of Iraq Project worked independently of the US inter-agency
planning process.
It
developed parallel proposals for post-invasion Iraq that did not
contribute to the official
US planning
effort. According to Hard
Lessons:
“The richly
developed reports constitute the single most rigorous
assessment
conducted
by the US Government before the war. Although the findings … did
not
amount to
an operational plan … [they] contained facts and analysis that
could – and
in some
cases did – inform operational planning.”131
127
Letter
Rycroft to Watkins, 5 June 2002, ‘Prime Minister’s Meeting with
Rumsfeld, 5 June: Iraq’.
128
Telegram
802 Washington to FCO London, 14 June 2002, ‘Iraq: UK/US Talks, 13
June’.
129
The
National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 198, 1
September 2006, New
State
Department
Releases on the “Future of Iraq” Project.
130
Bowen SW
Jr. Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. U.S.
Government Printing
Office, 2009.
131
Bowen SW
Jr. Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. U.S.
Government Printing
Office, 2009.
151