“Planning for war”

Resuming my pre-holiday catch-up on the Chilcot inquiry, Chris Ames at Iraq Inquiry Digest drew attention to interesting evidence given by Sir Anthony Brenton (below), minister at the British embassy in Washington, 2001 to 2004.

It is interesting not because it was secret but has now been published, or because, as Ames thinks, it supports the conspiracy interpretation of the events leading to the invasion of Iraq, but because it helps to explain why most officials and politicians thought military action was justified at the time.

On the failure to prepare better for what happened after the invasion, Brenton said:

Discussion about what you did with an occupied Iraq was not high on anybody’s agenda and couldn’t be, because if it had been, it would have leaked and therefore everybody would have said, “Ah! You’re confidently expecting the inspection process to fail and you are already planning for your war.” Now it may have been true, but it wasn’t something which we could have emerge publicly.

I can see why Ames thinks this “may be one of the most revealing statements made to the Inquiry”. If you start with the conviction that the Iraq war was such a terrible idea that no reasonable person could have wanted it for the reasons given, then it is easier to seize on a few sentences like these in all the millions of words than to ask yourself awkward questions about what the motives really were of all the officials and politicians in Britain and America who thought military action was justified.

If, on the other hand, you start with an open mind, Brenton’s words are unsurprising, if possibly a little depressing. The prospect of military action in Iraq was unpopular in Britain and the rest of Europe. Tony Blair, having decided that it was likely to be necessary, wanted to win public opinion round by showing that he had given Saddam Hussein a “final opportunity” to comply with UN resolutions. He did not expect Saddam to let the inspectors back into Iraq, and, when he did, he was sure that Saddam would get up to his old tricks of obstruction, obfuscation and deception.

It is depressing that Blair did not feel he could say that of course he was preparing for military action in case the diplomatic course failed, but that is a comment on his political caution not evidence of a conspiracy.

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