6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
“You do not
engage in military conflict that may produce regime change unless
you
are
prepared to follow through and work in the aftermath of that regime
change to
ensure the
country is stable and the people are properly looked
after.
…
“I think
that if stage one is successful, then you will find that the
international
community
wants to come behind that and make sure the Iraqi people are given
the
chance to
develop free from the repression of Saddam. I expect that there
will be
considerable
international support for that, and it is important that we do it …
I think
it is
extremely important that we do not take our eye off Afghanistan …
Getting
rid of the
Taliban was not the end, for me. The end is Afghanistan
reconstituted
as a
country that has got its own internal system working properly and
does not
threaten
the outside world. In exactly the same way in Iraq, if we come to
changing
the regime
… then I think it is extremely important that we make the most
detailed
preparations
and work within the international community as to what
happens
afterwards.”
70.
In his memoir,
Lord Mandelson, who had resigned from the Government in
January
2001,
recalled that, in January 2003, he asked
Mr Blair:
“‘What
happens after you’ve won? … You can go in there, you can take out
Saddam
but what do
you do with Iraq? You’re going to have a country on your hands. I
don’t
know what
your plan is. I don’t know how you are going to do it. Who is going
to
run the
place?’ Tony replied: ‘That’s the Americans’ responsibility. It’s
down to the
71.
Asked by the
Inquiry whether the assumption had been that the US would do
most
of the
post-conflict planning, Mr Blair stated that:
“… the
Americans, of course, would have the primary responsibility, but
let me be
absolutely
clear I was most certainly not thinking it was to be left to the
Americans.
The reason
why we had done a lot of planning ourselves was precisely because
we
knew we
were going to be part of the aftermath …”42
72.
The second
round of official-level talks between the US, the UK and
Australia
took place
in Washington on 22 January.
73.
The talks
made little progress.
74.
US
officials advised that US/UK differences on the role of the UN
would need
to be
resolved between Mr Blair and President Bush.
41
Mandelson
P. The Third
Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour. Harper
Press, 2010.
42
Public
hearing, 21 January 2011, page 124.
323