The Report of the Iraq Inquiry
712. In September 2004, Gen Walker received a well‑argued piece of advice from
Lt Gen McColl which made clear that the conditions on which decisions on drawdown
were to be based were unlikely to be met in the near future. Despite the warnings in
Lt Gen McColl’s paper and his advice that “the time is right for the consideration of the
substantive issues”,[1] the Chiefs of Staff, chaired by Gen Walker, declined to engage in a substantive review of UK options.
713. The Inquiry recognises that the scale of the resources which the UK might have deployed to deal with the issues was substantially less than the US could bring to bear. It is possible that the UK may not have been able to make a real difference, when the key strategic change that might have affected the outcome was the deployment of a much larger force. But proper consideration ought to have been given to what options were available, including for the deployment of additional personnel. Mr Straw raised the need for such a debate with Mr Blair in October.
714. The UK had consistently resisted US requests to deploy additional personnel, which Lt Gen McColl described as having “chipped away at the US/UK relationship”,[2] but in October it was agreed that the Black Watch would be deployed to North Babil for 30 days to backfill US forces needed for operations in Fallujah. Approximately 350 personnel from 1st Battalion, the Royal Highland Fusiliers were also deployed to Iraq to provide additional security across MND(SE) during the election period in January and February 2005. The UK remained reluctant to commit any further forces in the longer term: when Dutch forces withdrew from Muthanna province, the UK instead redeployed forces from elsewhere in MND(SE) plus a small amount of additional logistic support.
715. In January 2005, Lt Gen Fry produced a thoughtful and realistic assessment of the prospects for security in Iraq, observing that “we are not on track to deliver the Steady State Criteria (SSC) before the UN mandate expires, or even shortly thereafter”.[3] He judged that “only additional military effort by the MNF‑I [Multi‑National Force – Iraq] as a whole” might be able to get the campaign back on track. Lt Gen Fry identified three possible courses of action for the UK: increasing the UK scale of effort, maintaining the status quo or, if it were judged that the campaign was irretrievable, accepting failure and seeking to mitigate UK liability.
716. The Inquiry endorses Lt Gen Fry’s assessment of the options open to the UK at this point and considers that full and proper consideration should have been given to each option by DOP.
717. In his advice to Mr Blair on 21 January, Gen Walker did not expose the assessment made by Lt Gen Fry that only additional military effort by the MNF‑I might be able to get the campaign back on track.
