The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
749.
In his memoir,
Mr Blair wrote that following the UNSCOM report in
mid-December,
President
Clinton had decided to act.290
The air
strikes had been “nerve wracking” and
the
operation was “a limited success”. He added:
“The
general feeling was that Saddam had got away with it
again.”
750.
In his memoir,
Mr Annan wrote that Mr Butler’s management and
leadership
had been:
“… a gift
to Saddam – allowing him, with a growing body of evidence – to
claim that
he was all
for disarming and co-operating with the international community,
but that
UNSCOM’s
approach made this impossible.”291
751.
Mr Annan
wrote that this was “entirely untrue”; but Mr Butler “and his
backers
in
Washington and London” had “failed to understand” how it
“undermined his own
position”
and that of the inspections.
752.
Mr Annan
also wrote that whenever the military option had been floated
during
negotiations
in the previous year, he had asked what would happen after any
bombing of
Iraq; but
that question had never been answered. Desert Fox had:
“… ushered
in a four year period without inspections and without a dialogue
with Iraq
about its
place in the international system, even as sanctions continued to
devastate
its people
and hand Saddam the ultimate propaganda tool – to be able to blame
the
West, and
not his own misrule for the misery of his people.”
753.
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock wrote in his statement for the Inquiry:
“When those
attacks were called to a halt, the Security Council was left
divided and
the
inspectors were unable to return to the country.”292
The MOD
assessed that the effect of Operation Desert Fox on Iraq’s military
programmes
had been to
set back the ballistic missile programme by between one and two
years,
that the
WMD-related work of the Iraqi Ministry of Industry and Military
Industrialisation
Headquarters
in Baghdad had been disrupted for several months at least, and that
the
bombing had
“badly damaged, possibly destroyed outright” the L-29 unmanned
aerial
vehicle
programme.293
Rebuilding
the Republican Guard infrastructure was estimated
to require
up to a year.
290
Blair
T. A
Journey.
Hutchinson, 2010.
291
Annan
K. Interventions:
A Life In War And Peace. Allen Lane,
2012.
292
Statement,
November 2009, page 1.
293
House of
Commons, Iraq:
‘Desert Fox’ and Policy Developments,
10 February 1999, Research
Paper 99/13.
164