The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
347.
Lt Gen Viggers
told the Inquiry that:
“The 1st
Armoured Division entered Baghdad 16 days after it left its start
line. That
was a
stunning military operation. But in so doing, it caught everyone by
surprise,
because we
arrived at Baghdad Airport and looked round and said, ‘Now what
are
we going to
do?’ Part of the planning was assumed to be have been able to
take
place
during the advance …
“So we
arrived in the capital with a hugely celebratory population and
the
honeymoon
lasted a few days and then we were the guilty bastards. We were
not
laying on
everything that we were supposed to do. They were saying to us,
‘You
people put
a man on the moon and now you are saying we can’t have
electricity?
We don’t
believe you. You are now my opponent’. All that lack of
understanding was
what Bremer
and his civil military team was trying to deal with whilst building
itself.”
348.
Lt Gen Viggers
observed:
“We had no
prisons to put people in, or judges, we had no courts. So
merely
arresting
people and throwing them into pens wasn’t actually going to improve
the
sense of
security and wellbeing and confidence in the international
community.
“So … the
first three or four months was in effect making the plan in
contact.”224
349.
Ambassador
Bremer told the Inquiry that:
“… although
there were some 40,000 Coalition troops in Baghdad when I
arrived,
since the
collapse of the Saddam regime looters had pillaged at will for more
than
three weeks
undisturbed by Coalition forces. Coalition troops had no orders to
stop
the looting
and the Iraqi police in all major cities had deserted their
posts.
“The
looting was done out of rage, revenge, and for
profit.”225
350.
Consequences
of the looting included economic damage, destruction of a
large
part of the
government’s physical infrastructure and the transmission of a
message that
the
Coalition was unable to provide security.
351.
General Sir
Peter Wall, who had been based in Qatar as Air Marshal
Burridge’s
Chief of
Staff during the invasion, took over as the General Officer
Commanding
352.
Gen Wall told
the Inquiry that:
“… the main
threats at that time were tribal score settling, which we weren’t
involved
in – that
worked around us – looting, criminality, and … one or two other
sort of
224
Public
hearing, 9 December 2009, page 20.
225
Statement
Bremer, 18 May 2010, page 2.
226
Public
hearing Riley and Wall, 14 December 2009, page 34.
192