8 | The
invasion
455.
Adm Boyce
informed the Ad Hoc Meeting on Iraq on 14 April that the
military
campaign
was coming to an end and that Gen Franks had said the Coalition was
within
a few days
of declaring the switch to post-conflict
operations.299
Adm Boyce
had visited
British
troops in the South who were “in good heart and demonstrating their
flexibility in
dealing
with the shifting security situation”. Consideration was being
given to the security
management
of the post-conflict phase, where the British Division might take
charge of
two
provinces and supervise a further two with other troops joining the
Coalition for that
purpose.
456.
Mr Blair
concluded that progress needed to be made on
policing.300
457.
The issue of
looting in Baghdad was also discussed in Mr Blair’s
conversation with
President
Bush on 14 April.301
458.
Mr Blair
identified improving conditions in hospitals as the top
humanitarian priority
and the
main focus of media interest; Baghdad was still not a safe
environment for
humanitarian
assistance.
Reporting
on his visit to UK forces in Kuwait in early March 2003, Gen
Jackson, wrote that
he had been
“struck by just how little combat power the US have on the ground
now that
4ID cannot
deploy in time to influence the outcome”.302
The UK
would have “a little under
one third
of the available Coalition armour”. That combat power “may prove
decisive for
operations
around Baghdad”.
Admiral the
Lord Boyce told the Inquiry that he was:
“… always
extremely concerned about the anorexic nature of the
American
contribution,
and not just because the Fourth Infantry Division was taking a
while
to get
there, but because it was Rumsfeld’s view … that the Americans,
certainly
at that
particular stage … were very much, ‘We are here to do the war
fighting, not
the
peacekeeping.’ And combine that with the obsession that
Mr Rumsfeld had with
network-centric
warfare and therefore to prove that you could minimise the
number
of your
troops, in particular, because you had clever methods of conducting
warfare,
other than
using boots on the ground, meant that … we were desperately
under-
resourced …
so far as those forces going towards Baghdad were
concerned.
“So, once
the battle had been won, we didn’t have the boots on the ground
to
299
Minutes, 14
April 2003, Ad Hoc Meeting on Iraq.
300
Minutes, 14
April 2003, Ad Hoc Meeting on Iraq.
301
Letter,
Cannon to McDonald, 14 April 2003, ‘Iraq: Prime Minister’s
conversation with Bush, 14 April’.
302
Minute GCS
to CDS, 10 March 2003, ‘CGS Visit to Op TELIC’.
303
Public
hearing, 3 December 2009, page 100.
83