Examination of Witnesses (Questions 680-699)
MAJOR GENERAL
ROBIN BRIMS
CBE AND BRIGADIER
SHAUN COWLAM
MBE
25 JUNE 2003
Q680 Chairman: Because
we were told by one witness that the Swiss refused to sell them
to us, because they might be used for fighting purposes; you have
not heard that?
Major General Brims:
I have not, no.
Chairman: Would
you check on it? I do not want this to be another urban myth,
which it could be.
Mr Jones: Can we
ask what Air Marshal Burridge told us, too?
Chairman: Yes,
we did ask that; but if you could check with him, we would like
to have a good answer. The Swiss did a Belgium on us, which we
are still unfondly remembering. Right; on friendly fire.
Q681 Mr Roy: Gentlemen,
are you satisfied with the way in which the IFF procedures for
the coalition operations were agreed and then implemented between
the UK and the United States?
Major General Brims:
Clearly, there is an incident under investigation that would suggest
to me that something went wrong at one stage; that will have to
be investigated. What went wrong I do not know, but something
has gone wrong.
Q682 Mr Roy: What
did you do to protect British tanks, for example?
Major General Brims:
To protect the tanks; every vehicle had a physical, optical marker
on it, you have probably seen it on television, it was the left-hand
arrow-head, everybody had that, top, front, bottom, side. Also
we had a thermal panel that went on, so you could see it through
the sights. And then, partly for protection but for other reasons,
we had—
Q683 Mr Roy: Did the
thermal panel go on all the equipment?
Major General Brims:
I think certainly it would have been on all tanks, all the combat
bits it was on. The Blue Force Tracker was the one which did not
go on all the equipment, but the Blue Force Tracker was not just
for identification of friend and foe, that was actually a situation
so that people could see where obviously it had helped in the
larger scale. It was designed to go on, I cannot remember, I think
it went down to combat platoon level and some other, I cannot
remember precisely, and it did not go on to every vehicle; it
is an American system, actually they do not put it on every vehicle
either.
Q684 Mr Roy: So the
Americans should have been aware of everything that we had done.
Again, just remind me, were the British and the US forces able
to communicate with one another and with the aircraft?
Major General Brims:
It would vary, it would vary depending on which bit you armed;
and, with the aircraft, if it was an American aircraft, the principal
communication, our communication, was through this Anglico organisation
I mentioned earlier on, that was the principal one. And then the
real way we did it, with the Americans, was by exchanging liaison
officers; but it was only in the very early stages, in the, as
it were, direct fire weapons platforms, were we closely integrated,
because by about D plus 4 they were heading off up towards Baghdad.
Q685 Mr Roy: But they
were not able to talk to each other directly, is that right, in
layman's terms?
Major General Brims:
Not in many cases; but it varies from type of thing to type of
thing.
Q686 Mr Roy: I understand
between the US and the UK, but how do the UK forces avoid engaging
one another?
Major General Brims:
There are technical means, and there are tactics and procedures,
so there is a balance between both of those.
Q687 Mr Roy: And you
were not aware of any problems?
Major General Brims:
I most certainly was, yes; there have been problems, nobody would
deny that, and those cases will be investigated, and we will continue
to strive to make sure that the blue on blue, which is the way
it is called, is minimised. And it is a combination of IFF using
technical, scientific solutions, as they become available, and
making sure that you are training your staff and using the tactic
and techniques and procedures. Because, ultimately, even with
a technical solution, humans make mistakes; and it is bad enough
for the victim, but also it is awful for the human who makes the
mistake.
Q688 Mr Roy: One very
untechnical solution that we heard about was that we have been
told that US forces were not issued with recognition charts for
British vehicles, and, as a result, our force in the field had
to attach reflective tapes to their vehicles to make them appear
the same as the American vehicles at night. Were you aware of
that?
Major General Brims:
No. I think we are getting a bit confused. There are panels we
put onto the vehicles which are designed to show up; those were
coalition panels. We put them on our vehicles, the Americans put
them on their vehicles, in a particular configuration; this is
designed so that you can recognise them through a thermal-imaging
sight, and you would recognise it, so we would recognise this
panel if it was on an American or a British vehicle.
Q689 Mr Roy: So, as
far as you are aware, the US did give out the recognition charts
to their people, because that is not what we were told?
Major General Brims:
As far as I am aware, but I did not go personally and inspect
it.
Q690 Mr Roy: No, I
would not expect you to do that, I would never expect you personally
to do anything. I am not a big hard-man who thought it right to
put you under pressure, so this is not personal at all. Ultimately,
I am just asking it as a generalisation, because obviously, of
course, the buck stops with you, with your decision-making, that
is fair enough, and your good management skills. So I do not expect
you to know everyone and going about and seeing every panel, but
I would like just to find out the mind-set of what was being said,
what was being thought, what was going to be done?
Major General Brims:
Yes.
Q691 Mr Jones: Can
I just nail another one of these urban myths that you can see
floating around in parts of the press, and also, I think, various
e-mails that certain of us have got, about individuals having
to send home for large Union Jacks to be displayed on vehicles
so that they would actually be recognised. One, are you aware
of that happening; and, secondly, was it actually needed?
Major General Brims:
I do not think it was needed. I was aware of the press report,
subsequently.
Q692 Mr Jones: And
did it actually happen then?
Major General Brims:
I do not know. What I do know is that we have been very particular,
talking about flags, not to fly the Union flag, and this was because,
yes, we were invading a country but we were not occupying, we
were not taking it, capturing it for the US, it was terribly important
not to stick the Union flag in places, and we have been quite
particular about that. But, probably, it is not accurate.
Chairman: We are
coming to the end, but not quite.
Q693 Mr Roy: I just
want to move on to near the end, which is obviously the post-conflict
reconstruction. We heard that the forces on the ground under your
command were too small to maintain security effectively after
the initial combat phase was over. Would you agree or disagree
with that?
Major General Brims:
I do not know who said that. In the immediate period until I left,
and I handed over command of the Division at about the same time
as some of the early troops started to come back, there were not
enough troops to have done a post-conflict activity in a particular
way; again, one had to do things in the way you are dealt the
cards. My judgment was that we needed to hand back Iraq to the
Iraqis just as fast as possible, and my judgment was that we did
not need to overengage and be appearing as an army of occupation,
although, of course, technically we were, but to try to give them
back not only their freedoms but their self-respect and their
dignity. And that as soon as we can get their own institutions
up and running, bottom-up, forming police forces, and so forth,
and let them make the decisions, I felt that was the right way
to go.
Q694 Mr Roy: Did you
think the looting was going to be as widespread and as large,
for example, as it was, or was that built into—
Major General Brims:
The looting. I think that we anticipated there was going to be
quite a bit of looting; the history, in that part of the world,
unfortunately, it is the third time it has happened, so we anticipated
some. And I think that when you have been brutalised to the degree
that they have, and there was a certain amount of euphoria in
it, what I think is, perhaps that element of looting which was
actually criminal was a consequence of all the prisoners being
let out of prison, and when the local people complained about
it to me, I said, "Well you tell me who has been let out
of prison, what the offence was and where they are." At the
point at which I left, I regret to have to tell you, they had
not answered any of those, few basic questions.
Q695 Mr Roy: Before
that, when you were at the pre-conflict planning stage, did you
think about the post-conflict plan?
Major General Brims:
Yes, we did, and we did a lot of work, making sure that any humanitarian
thing was attended to. In fact, people talked about phase three
being the conflict and phase four being the post-conflict, we
recognised, everything behind you, once you had gone into Iraq,
was in phase four, post-conflict activity. And, therefore, you
take somewhere like al Faw, that was captured on 20 March, that
has been in post-conflict activity since 20 March, that was in
our plan, and the same story for Umm Qasr, Amara, and so forth.
Q696 Mr Roy: At that
stage, did you have to prepare the people under your command for
those post-conflict duties, the humanitarian aid, the policing?
Major General Brims:
We had to prepare them for it, but also we had to get the priorities
right, because you could not have phase four unless you had had
a successful phase three. So the phase three had to be the top
priority for most of the combat troops, but not all. But we did
lay a lot of plans, and some of the humanitarian, perhaps I could
ask you.
Brigadier Cowlam:
Yes; on the humanitarian side, we were not quite sure what situation
we would find, therefore we tended to assume that there would
be a significant humanitarian crisis. Also we believed that there
would be a delay between us moving to phase three, rather than
four, in some areas, and the ability of the international community
and the NGOs to come into theatre, and therefore we produced a
plan which would allow us to both procure and distribute humanitarian
aid, in the early stages using totally military resources, but
then using that as a foundation upon which the NGOs, the humanitarian
aid agencies, can build upon. So we had plans to open the port,
very quickly, for example; we hired additional vehicles to carry
a lot of this humanitarian aid through southern Iraq. We knew
that fresh water was a particularly valuable, important commodity,
and therefore we hired civilian water trucks to allow us to distribute
that; we planned and built the pipeline into Umm Qasr with fresh
water. And so we had a plan to deal with a humanitarian crisis,
both, one, because obviously it was necessary, but also, two,
to support the GOC's plan of making sure that the Iraqi people
saw the benefit of the coalition forces.
Q697 Mr Roy: And did
the people under your command expect to have those tasks?
Brigadier Cowlam:
I think they did, when the level of contingency planning developed
that far. Of course, a lot of the soldiers, the vast majority,
have got significant experience now of Bosnia and Kosovo, and
that type of operation. And whilst, on the one hand, it was a
new experience, going to Iraq, war-fighting, they did have some
experience to draw on after the war-fighting was over, and they
knew very quickly how they should behave and how they should act,
and the way that we can contribute to the wider campaign objectives.
Q698 Mr Jones: Because
I never give up, can I return now to the role of the media, and
if the hammer and chisel do not work I will go and get a pneumatic
drill. In terms of the media, and your impression of the media,
how accurate a picture do you think that it painted actually of
the operations that were under your command? And I wonder whether
you can give us any thoughts you had on the role of embedded journalists,
how it worked in practice, and any general thoughts you have?
We have heard Air Marshal Burridge's very strong views on embedded
journalists, could you give us your views?
Major General Brims:
The embedded journalists were absolutely fine, from my point of
view. I suppose, like everything, some people have a better feel
for it than others, and that is true of all things. None of them
let the side down, as far as we were concerned, that I am aware
of, and MoD might know differently, but as far as I am concerned
none of them did. And I used a spokesman at my level and talked
to them on an all-day, daily basis, as it were, obviously I was
in touch with the spokesman. I only engaged with them myself,
live, as it were, quite sparingly. I did give them quite a lot
of background briefings, to help them be able to report as best
they could. If anything, I would say that, and I am operating
with an awful lot of second-hand hindsight, what they were reporting,
I do not know how it was presented from London or Washington,
and therefore it is not necessarily the embedded media that is
the bit that one should examine but how the various media outlets
present things from their own home base.
Q699 Mr Jones: And,
in terms of the embedded journalists you were dealing with, obviously
you laid down certain rules and regulations about what they could
report, what you were telling them and when it could be reported;
on the whole, did they observe those, or did you have any incidences
where you had to say to journalists, "I'm sorry, you can't
do that"?
Major General Brims:
The rules and regulations actually were laid down by the MoD,
not by me, and they were pre-briefed when they came out. And there
was one incident, and I cannot rightly remember the details, not
a very serious breach, but somebody who had not been as precise
as they should have been.
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