6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
1310.
Mr Lee
told the Inquiry that the question of whether the post-conflict
period
carried too
much uncertainty to risk embarking on the conflict had never been
asked
in those
terms:
“… however
much you intellectually or analytically describe the wider
campaign,
psychologically
the focus is on the conflict itself. A certain amount of …
optimism,
hope,
creeps in in respect of the aftermath. That will be sorted out, and
there are too
many things
unknown there to do too much more planning. Therefore you go
ahead
and hope
that you’ve got enough of a structure which can then be
supplemented by
ad hoc
arrangements afterwards, and therefore it will all be sorted
out.
“I think,
as we know, in practice it turned out to be a lot more difficult
than we thought
at the
time.”
1311.
Several
witnesses highlighted the breakdown in US inter-agency
co‑ordination
as a significant obstacle to effective planning.
1312.
Mr Straw
described it as “the fundamental problem”.
1313.
In his
statement, Mr Blair wrote:
“There was
interaction at every level between the UK and the US system.
Some
of that, as
evidence to the Inquiry makes clear, was unsatisfactory, due
mainly
to
inter‑agency issues in the US. It is correct also that the shift
from the State
Department
to the Department of Defense in January 2003 made a
difference.
The shortcomings
of the US planning have been well documented and
accepted.
Our own
planning was complicated both by the difficulties of being fully
inserted into
the US
system and the fact that the planning was taking place against the
backdrop
of
fast-changing political and military plans.”551
1314.
Mr Straw
went further in directly attributing difficulties with UK planning
to the
situation
in the US. He told the Inquiry that “a significant number of the
problems we
faced …
could have been avoided by better planning and co-ordination, above
all
in
Washington”.552
The UK “got
caught up in internal administration politics”, but
that
“didn’t become
completely clear until after the invasion”.553
1315.
Mr Straw
concluded:
“… the
fundamental problem … was not a lack of planning in London … [but]
the
breakdown
in co-ordination in Washington between the Department of Defense
and
the State
Department”.554
551
Statement,
14 January 2011, page 14.
552
Public
hearing, 21 January 2010, page 15.
553
Public
hearing, 8 February 2010, page 104.
554
Public
hearing, 8 February 2010, page 107.
543