London, November 22: Former PM Tony Blair is largely responsible for Britain’s failure in Iraq as he had misled the nation by saying that the objective of the invasion was “disarmament, not regime change” and there were “no plans” for military action, secret government reports have revealed.
Though British military planning for a full invasion and regime change began in February 2002, Blair misled MPs and public throughout that year, according to hundreds of pages of secret reports on “lessons learnt” obtained by leading British newspaper ‘The Daily Telegraph’.
The reports contain transcripts of frank classified interviews in which senior British Army commanders vent their frustration and anger with Ministers and Whitehall officials.
The need to conceal this from Parliament and all but “very small numbers” of officials “constrained” the planning process — the result was a “rushed” operation “lacking in coherence and resources” which caused “significant risk” to troops and “critical failure” in the post-war period.
Operations were so under-resourced that some troops went into action with only five bullets each; others had to deploy to war on civilian airlines, taking their equipment as hand luggage; and some troops had weapons confiscated by airport security, the reports have revealed.
Commanders reported that the Army’s main radio system “tended to drop out at around noon each day because of the heat”. One described the supply chain as “absolutely appalling”, saying: “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.”
The Foreign Office unit to plan for postwar Iraq was set up in February, 2003, three weeks before the war started. Field commanders raged at Whitehall’s “appalling” and “horrifying” lack of support for reconstruction, with one top officer saying the government “missed a golden opportunity” to win Iraqi support. Another said: “It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything.”
–PTI