6.4 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, mid-2001
to January 2003
435.
The SPG stated
that “lack of clarity in US on post-conflict Iraq means we do not
yet
have a
winning concept”, but:
“US
military planners are fully aware of the need to establish a
strategic context and
for an
inter-agency approach, and considerable work has been done to
address
these
concerns. Our analysis and judgements are now based on a sound
knowledge
of the
CENTCOM plan and recent military developments to which we are
privy, and
our
assessment of whether to engage or not is (now based on a much
surer footing)
predicated
on this imperfect basis.
“… The
key military
question to
be addressed is:
‘Is there a
winning military concept and plan?’”
436.
The SPG set
out two responses: a list of conditions to be met before the
answer
could be
“yes” and a list of reasons why the answer should be
“no”:
•
The list of
conditions for participation included:
{{preparation of
an acceptable post-conflict administration (US
military
planners
were reported to have identified the military tasks to
be
addressed,
but how those would be co-ordinated with other aspects
of
nation-building
was not yet clear); and
{{UK
post-conflict tasks to be “limited in scope and time”.
•
Reasons for
not participating in the US plan included the absence of a
clear
post-conflict
strategy, which would make it likely that the UK military
commitment
would
become open-ended.
437.
Before Mr
Blair’s meeting with President Bush at Camp David on
7 September,
Sir Christopher Meyer advised that pacifying Iraq would
make
Afghanistan
look like “child’s play”. Afghanistan had shown that the US was
not
good at
consolidating politically what it had achieved
militarily.
438.
On 2
September, a few days before Mr Blair’s visit to Camp David, Mr
Rycroft
showed Mr
Blair, Mr Powell and Sir David Manning an article by
New York
Times
columnist
Mr Thomas L Friedman about the scale of the post-conflict
task.238
In
the
article, Mr
Friedman commented:
“… we are
talking about nation-building from scratch. Iraq has … none of
the
civil
society or rule of law roots that enabled the United States to
quickly build
democracies
out of the ruins of Germany and Japan …
…
238
Manuscript
comment Rycroft to Prime Minister on International
Herald Tribune, 2 September
2002,
Remaking
Iraq looks like a tall order.
185