The Iraq Inquiry Blogger continues to document the inquiry. This time it’s the military men’s turn.
Two top military men appeared before the Iraq inquiry this morning, continuing to give evidence on the theme of the pre-war military planning on which Admiral Boyce spoke yesterday.
Major General David Wilson, the senior British adviser at US central command in Florida when planning for the war was underway, conjured up a world of US closed doors beyond which “no foreign” could peer.
Had he overstepped his brief – to talk about things from a purely military perspective – he would have been shot. This was a place where you could be shot if you stepped over paint lines on concrete, he told the inquiry briskly, accompanied by expressive hand gestures.
Not that his American counterparts were actively looking for opportunities to shoot British military men. Or at least, we hope not. They welcomed our advice, and our role as “thinkers”, our suggestion of troops met “with gratitude”.
But how much influence did we really have? The “shutters were firmly down” on Iraq when Wilson took up post in April 2002 – he and his people fell into the foreign exclusion category. That all changed, suddenly, in late June, when they saw a draft planning order; discussions became constant, and dynamic, though he was never put on the spot.
The US wanted to build a coalition, something the Brits had advised. But it was in the aftermath of the invasion where things really seemed to come unstuck, whatever our advice.
The Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, run by Jay Garner to supervise the post-war effort, had only got 200 of the 500 staff it had expected.
As well as being under-staffed, the post-war effort was under-funded, and had some profound difficulties with the “clarity” of its mission, Wilson said.
Earlier, Lieutenant General Sir Anthony Piggott, the deputy chief of defence staff (commitments) and number two to Admiral Boyce, tried to avoid the phrase aftermath entirely. It should be thought of instead, he said, as a constant process of conflict resolution, which is still going on.
The inquiry panel struggled to pin Piggott down on the specifics of what the military had been planning, pre-invasion. His talk was of scoping options, rather than even of making plans.
The focus from the UK government was “weapons of mass destruction” – an unfortunate phrase, in Piggott’s opinion, though unfortunately he didn’t elaborate on why. WMD seemed to lead to regime change – at least, that was the UK government’s position; the US position seemed to be the other way round.
There was no doubting which country Piggott hailed from. In discussions on the Middle East, there was still an “after-whiff” of the terrorist atrocities which he insisted throughout on calling “11/9”.
We’ll be back with more analysis on Monday – and as ever, live Tweets from 11.30am when the Inquiry resumes @iraqinquiryblog