9.1 |
March to 22 May 2003
Mr Hilary
Benn, Minister for International Development from May to October
2003,
commented
that more should have been done to understand the difference
between
“ideological
Ba’athists” and those who had “joined the Ba’ath Party because
that’s what
you needed
to do to get on”.237
Sir Suma
Chakrabarti told the Inquiry that the de-Ba’athification decision
was
Sir Kevin
Tebbit, MOD Permanent Under Secretary from 1998 to November 2005,
told the
Inquiry
that:
“We didn’t
assume that the Americans were going to de-Ba’athify as
fundamentally
as they
did …
“I thought
we had an undertaking from the American administration that they
were
just going
to do very light de-Ba’athification … and that the army … other
than the
very top,
would be used and brought into the system.”239
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock, who served as the Prime Minister’s Special
Representative
on Iraq
from September 2003 to March 2004, told the Inquiry that there were
strong
arguments
in favour of the de-Ba’athification policy; the error was in
implementing them
before
arrangements had been thought through for replacing the individuals
who were
removed
and, later, in handing over responsibility for implementing the
administration
of the
scheme to Dr Ahmed Chalabi and his Commission.240
The view of
Maj Gen Cross was that the decision to de-Ba’athify was
“flawed”.241
SIS1 told
the Inquiry that Ambassador Bremer had been acting under political
direction
on
de‑Ba’athification policy but:
“Initially
you’re talking about decapitating the regime and leaving the
structures in
place. He
went a lot further, and frankly, to this day, I don’t really know
why.”242
Mr Edward
Chaplin, British Ambassador to Iraq from July 2004 to May 2005,
observed
that:
“… it is
easy to underestimate with hindsight how powerful the feelings were
amongst
those who
had suffered most from Saddam Hussein’s regime, that the idea
that
anybody who
had served really at any level of responsibility in the
organisation that
served
Saddam Hussein was acceptable in a post-Saddam Hussein situation
was
simply
anathema and I think, if you talk to the military commanders in the
South,
you will
find that we suffered from that ourselves – somebody who appeared
to be,
actually
perfectly competent … was simply not acceptable to the local
population
because he
was too closely identified with the previous regime. So
de-Ba’athification
was driven
largely by the forces that were now in charge, or potentially in
charge; it
wasn’t just
a decision by outsiders.”243
237
Public
hearing, 2 February 2010, page 18.
238
Public
hearing, 22 January 2010, page 46.
239
Private
hearing, 6 May 2010, pages 33-34.
240
Public
hearing, 15 December 2009, pages 73-74.
241
Public
hearing, 7 December 2009, page 67.
242
Private
hearing, 2010, page 95.
243
Public
hearing, 1 December 2009, pages 101-102.
195