The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
about the
fourth level of the Ba’ath is that there will be a vetting process
… to ensure
no rotten
apples are kept on … One of the leading academic Iraq‑watchers,
Toby
Dodge, has
remarked to us that membership of the Ba’ath was less
significant
latterly
than less formal networks of control and influence. There is a
danger, in
focusing on
the Ba’ath, of overlooking potentially more malign
elements.”
40.
The message
from the FCO also re‑stated the legal position that Occupying
Powers
could
remove public officials from their posts but that “for both policy
and legal reasons,
we should
stick to what is necessary”. Occupying Powers could not “regulate
or prohibit
political
expression or activity except to the extent that is necessary on
grounds of
security or
public order”.
“The
longer‑term process of de‑Ba’athification is for a future
government of Iraq
to take
forward, in parallel with the wider transitional justice
dossier.”
42.
On 13 May,
Mr Walt Slocombe, CPA Senior Adviser on National Security
and
Defense,
met Mr Hoon in London.27
In his
record of the meeting, Mr Hoon’s Assistant
Private
Secretary wrote that Mr Slocombe had said “a visible and
functioning police
force …
might require some compromise on de‑Ba’athification”.
43.
Mr Simon
Webb, MOD Policy Director, was also present at Mr Hoon’s
meeting with
Mr Slocombe.
Mr Webb told the Inquiry:
“We had
certainly accepted … the need for de‑Ba’athification … So we had
bought
that by
that stage … I don’t recall having a specific conversation about
how far that
was going
to go. But … I think we were probably content for this to be
decided by
those in
Baghdad. If the policy is partial de‑Ba’athification, and everybody
seems
to
understand the issues … I wouldn’t have tried to press a particular
level in the
command
structure on Walt. … There was a judgement which you couldn’t
really
make until
you got on the ground about what level you went down to … at
some
stage, you
hit the school teacher who just joined the party because they
wanted
a job.
But where in that spectrum you cut it off, recognising that you,
implicitly
at least …
wanted to remove the possibility of an early reassertion of power
by
44.
Ambassador
Bremer told the Inquiry that “Slocombe reported that the British
officials
agreed with
the need for vigorous de‑Ba’athification, especially in the
security sector”.29
27
Minute
Williams to Webb, 13 May 2003, ‘Call on Defence Secretary by Walt
Slocombe: 13 May 2003’.
28
Private
hearing, 23 June 2010, pages 66‑68.
29
Statement
Bremer, 18 May 2010, page 3.
10