A catalogue of errors over planning for Iraq after the invasion, and an inability to influence key figures in the US administration, led to anarchy in Iraq from which the country has not recovered, the British defence secretary during the invasion admits today.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Geoff Hoon reveals that Britain disagreed with the US administration over two key decisions in May 2003, two months after the invasion – to disband Iraq’s army and "de-Ba’athify" its civil service. Mr Hoon also said he and other senior ministers completely underestimated the role and influence of the vice-president, Dick Cheney.
"Sometimes … Tony had made his point with the president, and I’d made my point with Don [Rumsfeld] and Jack [Straw] had made his point with Colin [Powell] and the decision actually came out of a completely different place. And you think: what did we miss? I think we missed Cheney."
Giving the most frank assessment of the postwar planning, Mr Hoon, admits that "we didn’t plan for the right sort of aftermath".
"Maybe we were too optimistic about the idea of the streets being lined with cheering people. Although I have reconciled it in my own mind, we perhaps didn’t do enough to see it through the Sunni perspective. Perhaps we should have done more to understand their position."
He said history would have to decide whether the coalition should have anticipated the Sunni-Shia violence. "Given what we know now, I suppose the answer is that we should, but we did not know that at the time."
The British Defense Secretary is at least willing to say what all of us know – that in the first couple of years of the war, the man making the calls was Dick Cheney. And his calls were uniformly bad calls – informed more by his paranoid personality than by anything coming from the actual situation of any experience with such matters. In the First Gulf War, he looked good. How else could he look? We went in with a full force, a great general, got the job done, then came home. I think Cheney really thought he could turn Iraq over to the Iraqi National Congress and Amhad Chalabi, and then set up U.S. drilling operations for his oil company. That’s the deepest thought he ever put into it. It was a wrong thing to do, invading Iraq. But to then do it badly is beyond belief. None of these guys will look very good in the history books, but Dick Cheney will be the star culprit. We owe it to the world to impeach him, if only as a way of saying we’re sorry…
What constitutes a war criminal?
Good question, joyhollywood. I think impeachment has to come first.