The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
Mubarak547
who warned
of unleashing 100 Bin Ladens. The combination of
an
undefeated Ba’athist regime melting away and coming back as a
gradually
more potent
insurgency combined with the attractiveness of Iraq as a means
for
international
terrorists under the umbrella of Al Qaida to have a go at the
Americans,
combined
with Shia extremists supported from Iran, this combination creating
the
level of
violence, the onslaught of violence that I have mentioned, this was
not
thought
through by any observer.
“I think
had we known the scale of violence, it might well have led to
second
thoughts
about the entire project. And we could certainly have mitigated
some
aspects of
it had we had a clearer appreciation of it in advance
…
“But I
don’t think it is reasonable to assume that we should have
predicted all this
violence in
advance, because very few people did actually do that. That
wasn’t
the
anticipated scenario that we were stepping into and it was an
unprecedented
scenario
that we found ourselves in.”548
1307.
Lord Boyce
told the Inquiry that a number of assumptions had been made
about
the state
of Iraq after the invasion, which, with the benefit of hindsight,
were “probably
optimistic,
to say the least”.549
There had
been:
“… an
expectation that we would find more of a structure which was ready
to step
into place
than actually turned out to be the case in May [2003], even before
the
de‑Ba’athification
and the disbandment of the Iraqi army …”
1308.
Mr Lee
told the Inquiry that the Government had identified many of
the
problems
that emerged later, but failed to analyse the risk they
represented.
1309.
Mr Lee
commented on the UK’s failure to build on its own analytical
platform:
“I think
there is a valid criticism that on the one hand we had identified
an awful lot
of these
problems, and had identified quite explicitly, as I recall, the
question of the
aftermath
as a crucial element of the campaign overall, and the whole concept
of a
successful
campaign and winning including a successful outcome to that
…
“But we
didn’t actually carry that through … into an analysis at the time
of what
the
post-conflict plans actually were on the level of uncertainty that
remained, and
therefore
the level of risk that remained, in the plan on those issues
…”550
547
Mr Hosni
Mubarak, President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011.
548
Public
hearing, 16 December 2009, pages 81-82.
549
Public
hearing, 27 January 2011, page 68.
550
Private
hearing, 22 June 2010, pages 46-47.
542