6.5  |  Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to March 2003

“… We were told there would be a functioning Iraqi civil service. There wasn’t. We

were told there would be a humanitarian disaster. It was averted. We were warned

that Saddam might fight to the bitter end. He collapsed.

“We were told that Shia/Sunni sectarian violence would be a factor. Actually, to begin

with it was much less than feared …”

1303.  Mr Blair told the Inquiry “there was nothing that was putting us on notice about the

problem we ended up with”.542 Planning took place, but:

“The trouble was we were planning (a) on an assumption that Iraq had a functioning

bureaucracy and civil service, which in the end it didn’t, and (b) our focus really was

on humanitarian, environmental and the possibility of use of chemical/biological

weapons and so on. I mean, I would say there was a significant amount of planning

that went on, unfortunately directed at the wrong things.”543

1304.  Mr Straw told the Inquiry:

“… the consequences of war are unpredictable … it’s an inherently chaotic process.

So the possibilities of aftermath of military action are greater than they are for

many other human actions … What was extremely difficult to predict was the exact

circumstances on the ground … [I]f you look at the detailed planning documents

we produced and the State Department produced in early 2003 both we and the

Americans were predicting all the things that then happened. What we weren’t able

to predict was the exact mix of these things. I mean … yes, there was a prediction

about the possibility of terrorism. We didn’t predict its extent …”544

1305.  Lt Gen Reith, who had extensive experience of working with humanitarian

agencies and NGOs during the 1999 Kosovo campaign,545 told the Inquiry that, on arrival

in Iraq, he had been surprised by the state of the country’s infrastructure:

“All of our intelligence assets were looking at the Iraqi forces. What they weren’t

looking at was the infrastructure, and … when we arrived in there, I was amazed …

that it was completely broken …”546

1306.  Sir John Sawers, British Ambassador to Egypt before becoming the Prime

Minister’s Special Representative on Iraq in mid-2003, told the Inquiry:

“Very few observers actually highlighted the scale of the violence that we could

face. I think about the only person in my recollection who got it right was President

542 Public hearing, 21 January 2011, page 27.

543 Public hearing, 21 January 2011, pages 122-123.

544 Public hearing, 2 February 2011, pages 121-122.

545 Fourteenth Report from the Defence Committee, Session 1999-2000, Lessons of Kosovo, HC 347-I,

paragraph 222.

546 Public hearing, 15 January 2010, page 45.

541