6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
everybody
in, and that’s what we were trying to achieve. So to hand it all
over to the
military is
a bit foolish, because your chances then of getting co-operation
from the
rest of the
international system may be diminished.”32
60.
Ms Short also
said that:
“… all this
enormous State Department planning, which included the danger
of
chaos and
sectarian fighting and so on, was thrown away. ORHA and the
Pentagon
took over.
They believed there wasn’t going to be any trouble and people would
be
waving
flowers at them, and off they went. They believed their own
propaganda, and
the British
Government’s capacity to think better … was just subverted and
thrown
away, to
our deep, eternal shame.”33
61.
Sir Kevin
Tebbit described some of the consequences of the
changes:
“I had
numerous … meetings with very senior people in the Pentagon … where
we
were trying
to stress the importance of actually getting the right sort of
planning in to
Phase IV
for the aftermath … where … they had discarded the State
Department’s
advice, and
indeed people … and I could not get across to them the fact that
…
the
Coalition would not be seen as a liberation force where flowers
would be stuck
at the end
of rifles … [T]his was absolutely not accepted, and I think, as far
as the
Pentagon
was concerned … they just thought that Iraq would be fine on the
day …
and
everybody would be happy.”34
62.
Sir Peter
Ricketts told the Inquiry:
“I think
the crucial problems [with post-conflict planning] arose from the
late
decisions
in the US to put a department and an organisation in charge which
had not
been
prepared for this role. I do think, if the careful State Department
work had been
allowed to
feed through into operational planning for the post-conflict phase,
that
would have
been more successful. I think it would have been easier for us to
dock
with it,
and the overall effect on the ground would … have been a stronger
operation
63.
Mr Alastair
Campbell, Mr Blair’s Director of Communications and Strategy
from
2000 to
2003, told the Inquiry: “Assumptions were made about the State
Department
planning.”
He asserted that: “once we had realised … that the Pentagon
appeared to be
taking the
lead on almost every level … the Prime Minister was … rattling a
lot of cages
within the
British system and asking for an awful lot of things to be
done”.36
32
Public
hearing, 2 February 2010, page 61.
33
Public
hearing, 2 February 2010, page 85.
34
Public
hearing, 3 December 2009, page 62.
35
Public
hearing, 1 December 2009, page 92.
36
Public
hearing, 12 January 2010 (afternoon session), pages
69-70.
321