Iraq Inquiry: 'planning was impeded'
Updated on 03 December 2009
The former chief of the defence staff Admiral Lord Boyce has claimed military planning for the invasion of Iraq was affected by politicians' decisions.
He told the Iraq Inquiry ministers did not allow him to start full-scale planning until four months before the invasion and the schedule was so tight, the 7th Armoured Brigade "Desert Rats", the lead British formation, did not achieve full operational capability until the day before British and US troops went into Iraq in March 2003.
Lord Boyce claimed he had demanded assurances from prime minister Tony Blair that the military action was legal and he was scathing about the lack of preparations for dealing with post-war Iraq both by the Department for International Development and the Americans.
He also claimed that at the time of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 there had been "absolutely no contingency planning" by the British for military action against Iraq.
He revealed ministers had been concerned that details would leak out, undermining their efforts to get a new United Nations Security Council resolution requiring Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction.
The issue was considered so sensitive that Lord Boyce said he was even ordered by the then Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, not to discuss it with the chief of defence logistics.
He said: "I was prevented from doing that by the Secretary of State for Defence because of the concern of it becoming public knowledge that we were planning for a military contribution which might be unhelpful in the activity in the UN to secure a Security Council resolution."
As a result, the military chiefs were unable to take any practical steps to prepare for military action, such as buying in the extra equipment they would need for the operation.
He added: "All you would be doing was high level planning, saying this is what we could do when we got the go ahead to start bringing in people like the Defence Logistics Organisation."
The MoD was only finally given the authorisation to begin "overt" planning in November 2002, following the passing of Security Council resolution 1441 requiring Saddam to disarm.
He said: "The late stage at which I was finally given authority to start mobilising the logistics organisation to get the equipment that we needed left us with some very short timelines."
In the end, he said that he was confident that the troops who were at "the front of the frontline" had the equipment they needed when the invasion began.
But when he was asked about the concerns raised by families of some the soldiers killed in action, he said: "I'm not familiar with the detail about things such as body armour. The unfortunate thing about going to war is that some people are going to get killed."
