Quote:
Blair knew US had no post-war plan for Iraq
· PM committed troops despite chaos fears
· Bush 'offered to fight without UK'
Nicholas Watt, political editor
Sunday June 17, 2007
The Observer
Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.
In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.
He also agreed to commit troops to the conflict even though President George Bush had personally said Britain could help 'some other way'.
The disclosures, in a two-part Channel 4 documentary about Blair's decade in Downing Street, will raise questions about Blair's public assurances at the time of the war in 2003 that he was satisfied with the post-war planning. In one of the most significant interviews in the programme, Peter Mandelson says that the Prime Minister knew the preparations were inadequate but said he was powerless to do more.
'Obviously more attention should have been paid to what happened after, to the planning and what we would do once Saddam had been toppled,' Mandelson tells The Observer's chief political commentator, Andrew Rawnsley, who presents the documentary.
'But I remember him saying at the time: "Look, you know, I can't do everything. That's chiefly America's responsibility, not ours."' Mandelson then criticises his friend: 'Well, I'm afraid that, as we now see, wasn't good enough.'.
Opponents of the war, who have long claimed that the Pentagon planned a short, sharp offensive to overthrow Saddam Hussein with little thought of the consequences, claimed last night that the programme vindicated their criticisms. Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, told The Observer: 'These frank admissions that the Prime Minister was aware of the inadequacies of the preparations for post-conflict Iraq are a devastating indictment.'
Blair's most senior foreign affairs adviser at the time of the war makes clear that Blair was 'exercised' on the exact issue raised by the war's opponents. Sir David Manning, now Britain's ambassador to Washington, says: 'It's hard to know exactly what happened over the post-war planning. I can only say that I remember the PM raising this many months before the war began. He was very exercised about it.'
Manning reveals that Blair was so concerned that he sent him to Washington in March 2002, a full year before the invasion. Manning recalls: 'The difficulties the Prime Minister had in mind were particularly, how difficult was this operation going to be? If they did decide to intervene, what would it be like on the ground? How would you do it? What would the reaction be if you did it, what would happen on the morning after?
'All these issues needed to be thrashed out. It wasn't to say that they weren't thinking about them, but I didn't see the evidence at that stage that these things had been thoroughly rehearsed and thoroughly thought through.'
On his return to London, Manning wrote a highly-critical secret memo to Blair. 'I think there is a real risk that the [Bush] administration underestimates the difficulties,' it said. 'They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.'
Within a year Britain lost any hope of a proper reconstruction in Iraq when post-war planning was handed to the Pentagon at the beginning of 2003.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's envoy to the postwar administration in Baghdad, confirms that Blair was in despair. 'There were moments of throwing his hands in the air: "What can we do?" He was tearing his hair over some of the deficiencies.' The failure to prepare meant that Iraq quickly fell apart. Greenstock adds: 'I just felt it was slipping away from us really, from the beginning. There was no security force controlling the streets. There was no police force to speak of.'
The revelation that Blair was 'exercised' in private will raise questions about his public assurances. The former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, told the programme he was given a personal assurance by Blair that he was satisfied by the preparations. 'I said to Tony, are you certain?' Kinnock told the programme. 'And when he said: "I'm sure," that was a good enough reassurance.'
Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, confirms that the President offered Blair a way out. Bush told Blair: 'Perhaps there's some other way that Britain can be involved.' Blair replied: 'No, I'm with you.'
· The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair will be screened on Channel 4 next Saturday.
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http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyb...104989,00.html
i know quite what to say about this.
it seemed clear that this amounted to being true from the way in which things have played out in iraq..but it is another matter to KNOW that there really was no plan.
no plan.
so the bush administration was willing to commit the american military to this debacle not only on at the very best dubious grounds, but worse to do so without assuming the most basic responsibility toward the military, which was to have a fucking plan.
this is a most basic responsibility because it enables the military to enter a situation, do its thing--which is only possible if it has a clearly defined thing to do, yes?--and get out. a plan outlines the objectives, the route to those objectives--it provides a logic relative to which situations can be evaluated and remedies implemented---without a plan, what can a military apparatus actually do? how can it possibly be coherent if there is no logic and no set of procedures and so nothing that can be used for evaluation?
at the symbolic level, the bush administration's debacle in iraq has performed the theater of an illegitimate war--problems with premise recapitulate in problems of operational execution. it's like the zeitgeist takes over and expresses itself through such symmetries. but at the same time, given that the military is made up of actual human being whose lives are not just material for theater in the hegel mode....i would expect that the information raised in the above article would anger more than just those of us who opposed the war from its outset...i imagine it would anger anyone in the military, or who was in the military or who has family in the military--or anyone who imagines that it is the responsibility of a political regime that commits its military to an action to at least have a fucking plan...
and they say incompetence is not criminal.
surely there has to be a point beyond which that is not true.
how much more criminal an act of incompetence can there be than this?
think of the number of people who are dead on all sides because there is and was no plan.
think of what tactics like "the surge" mean in a context shaped by no plan.
no wonder there's chaos. how could there be anything other than chaos? and without a plan--without an operational logic--how could an apparatus distinguish chaos from its inverse in any event?
no. plan.
un-fucking-believable.