End of phase one – the narrative of the war

So there we have it: 24 days of evidence to stitch together phase one, what Chilcot has called the narrative of the war. We now have a chronology of the key events from late-90s Saddam-era Iraq to post-war reconstruction and UK troops “draw-down”.

We’re still a long way from the panel announcing any form of conclusion – there remains at least a month of public hearings, and there’s no guarantee they’ll even report at all this year. But there are already a fair few contenders for the most important “lessons learned”.

Intelligence analysis: The role of intelligence relating to WMD in the build-up to war has already had an entire inquiry of its own. Controversially Butler didn’t conclude that “over-reliance on dissident and emigre sources was a major cause of subsequent weaknesses,” at least in relation to WMD.

However during this Inquiry several witnesses, including former FCO Middle East director Edward Chaplin, have questioned the quality of US intelligence on what would happen in Iraq post-war: “Some Americans were hearing some very happy talk from the likes of [Ahmed] Chalabi that, once Saddam Hussein had gone, they didn’t need to worry, everything would be fine, the subtext being particularly if they handed over power to someone like Mr Chalabi.”

Perhaps the most striking exchange from the evidence we’ve already heard was the following between FCO defence & intelligence director Sir William Ehrman and Sir Lawrence Freedman: “I think, Sir Lawrence, four out of 10 as a strike rate is pretty good.”

“Not when you are going to war.”

“On the basis of intelligence, four out of 10 is not a bad strike rate.”

As for WMD intel Alastair Campbell will face further questioning about both the September 2002 45 Minute dossier and the February 2003 “dodgy dossier” when he appears before the panel next week.

A legal but illegitimate war? Former FCO legal officer Elizabeth Wilmshurst and Clare Short will doubtless talk to this topic when they give evidence in phase two but even Our Man at the United Nations Sir Jeremy Greenstock evidently had concerns about the difference between the legality and the legitimacy of going to war:

“I regarded our invasion of Iraq … as legal but of questionable legitimacy, in that it didn’t have the democratically observable backing of a great majority of member states or even perhaps of a majority of people inside the United Kingdom.” The diplomatic damage done by the US/UK pushing ahead with hostilities regardless may take years to repair.

Insufficient post-conflict planning: It’s hardly controversial to suggest that while the generals were busily planning the military campaign not nearly enough work was done on planning the peace (short-lived as it turned out to be).

Former ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer summed it up best: “There was a significant chunk of the [US] administration that was not particularly concerned about the aftermath because they thought it would come out all right on the night. Condoleezza Rice said to me once … that the trouble with the Europeans, that we were too sniffy, too … condescending about the Iraqi people, who were perfectly capable of running a democratic system and we should allow them to do so.”

Current MI6 Chief (and then UK Special Envoy) Sir John Sawers: “Very few observers actually highlighted the scale of the violence that we could face. I think about the only person in my recollection who got it right was President Mubarak who warned of unleashing 100 Bin Ladens.”

De-Ba’athification: Even witnesses who told the Inquiry it was right to purge some of the two million Ba’athists in post-war Iraq from their posts felt Paul Bremer went too far. John Sawers backed the removal of the top three tiers – around 5,000 people – but thought Bremer’s decision to target 30,000 a step too far.

He described arguing against the decision but, as an American colleague discovered, “this was a policy that had actually already been decided in Washington and there was no point getting on the wrong side of it.”

Poor police training: Witness after witness described the pitiful state of the Iraqi police even several years after the invasion, with talk of murder squads, corruption and links to militia groups (by comparison army reform has sounded relatively smooth).

It doesn’t sound as though the force was much to be reckoned with to start with, but a couple of witnesses including former ambassador Sir William Patey questioned UK attempts to re-train them using what they called “Surrey constabulary” when what was needed was RUC/PSNI armed officer or something more akin to the Italian carabinieri.

Lack of Whitehall coordination: Repeated verbal spats between army and DfID witnesses were just one pointer to what appears at times to have been a disjointed political establishment back in London.

So what are we left with at what might loosely be termed half-time? As things stand it doesn’t feel to me as though there will be one major bombshell, one startling or damning revelation that will emerge from the inquiry of which we were entirely unaware; rather that it will tie together for the first time in a unified narrative a string of mistakes and misjudgments that firstly took us to war and then prevented us leaving for the next six years.

Back next week for evidence from 14h00 – have a good weekend.