6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
“This is
not to underestimate the challenge that the Coalition would face.
Iraq has
several
advantages over Afghanistan. One is time. The effort in Afghanistan
had
to be
planned and executed in a matter of weeks after September 11th.
With Iraq,
by
contrast, there has been time to prepare. We have set up a Post War
Planning
Office to
think through problems and co-ordinate the efforts of Coalition
countries
and US
Government agencies. General Franks in an inter-agency process has
been
working on
this for many months.
“A second
advantage is resources. Afghanistan is a poor country that
has
been
brutalized by continuous war – civil war and occupation. Iraq has a
solid
infrastructure
with working networks of roads and [resources] and it has oil to
help
give free
Iraq the means to get on its feet.”
448.
In his
speech to the Labour Party Spring Conference, Mr Blair stated
that the
UK should
be as committed to rebuilding Iraq as to removing Saddam
Hussein.
449.
He offered
no detail on what form that assistance might take.
450.
Before his
speech to the Labour Party Spring Conference in Glasgow
on
15 February,
Mr Blair asked officials for information on a number of
issues, including
some raised
by Ms Short in her letter of 14 February:
“(a) How
many Iraqi children under the age of five die each month? (We have
seen
the figure
of 150 deaths per 1000. Is this accurate, and what does it mean
in
actual
numbers?)
(b) How
many political prisoners are there in prison in Iraq at any
time?
(c) Is
Northern Iraq better administered than the rest of Iraq? If so,
what concrete
examples
can we give?
…
(f) How
were the Shia and Kurd uprisings after the Gulf War put
down?
(g) What
was Iraq’s standard of living in the 1960s compared with eg
Portugal,
Taiwan, and
others? And today?”201
451.
The FCO
response emphasised the unreliability of the available data, in
particular
for infant
mortality and the number of political prisoners.202
The FCO
also advised that
the
comparative figures on GDP per capita came from different sources
and should
only be
used as indicators, although the comparison between Iraq and
Portugal was
“particularly
illuminating”.
201
Minute
Rycroft to Owen, 14 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Prime Minister’s
Speech’.
202
Letter Owen
to Rycroft, 14 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Prime Minister’s
Speech’.
387