Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1687-1699)
SIR KEVIN
TEBBIT KCB CMG, AIR
VICE MARSHAL
CLIVE LOADER
OBE AND MR
IAN LEE
17 DECEMBER 2003.
Q1687 Chairman: Welcome. We are now in
the final lap of our inquiry. We nevertheless welcome your presence
here. Would you like to make any introductory remarks?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I think so much
has gone before me that you might as well get straight into it.
Q1688 Chairman: Sir Kevin, when and how
did you first become aware that the US was planning for an attack
on Iraq?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I like the way
you put the question.
Q1689 Chairman: Is the terminology too
inflexible?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It is fair to
say that at the military level there was some exchange of discussion
about possible operations during the summer of 2002, but this
did not really crystallise into serious planning until the autumn.
There were some exchanges between our people at that point.
Q1690 Chairman: When were you fairly
certain that those plans would be executed?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Not until right
at the end. I expect this is a hearing on the political and military
process. It is very clear to us that the initial objective was
for military capability to be used for coercive purposes and only
if the diplomatic track failed was it for military action. The
whole plan was to support a diplomatic process, culminating in
Resolution 1441 in November, followed by the return of the inspectors
and the hope that that process would indeed bring the result,
the bringing into conformity with the security resolutions by
Saddam Hussein. It was only subsequently, when it became evident
that diplomacy had failed, that what had been a military plan
put there for coercive and contingent purposes had to become a
reality.
Q1691 Chairman: I recall at the end of
February the government still said no decision to deploy British
forces in action had been taken. That was in Hansard on 26 February.
Can you recall a specific date? Was that pretty close to the public
announcement?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: No. Clearly
the military side of the department had to get more and more precise
about its military planning capacity, but until a political decision
was taken, and that political decision in the UK did not come
until after the Attorney General's ruling on legal aspects and
subsequently the vote in Parliament, until those things had happened
then there was certainly no question of the military feeling it
was straight to full go-ahead. Until that point and until the
parliamentary decision on the eighteenth, there was also the ultimatum
from the President to Saddam Hussein, until those things had happened,
this was still increasingly precise military planning of deployment
but it was not a decision to engage in action. Many of us felt
right up until very late in the day, until the failure of the
second resolution, that there was still a chance that the military
force which had been deployed would succeed, by its existence
but by being deliberately withheld, to put coercive pressure on
Saddam Hussein to come into conformity without the need for a
shot to be fired.
Q1692 Chairman: It might sound a fairly
abstract question or academic question, but if you were giving
a series of lectures on the beginning of war, would you have thought
that your section on Gulf War 2 was in conformity with many of
the other wars? That is that once the build-up continues, it is
really quite difficult to stop a military build-up; whatever the
outcome the momentum or preparation just pushes you on and on
and on to a war, even though politically it might be disadvantageous.
I saw in some material that the Americans had really seriously
decided to attack Iraq as early as December.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: No; certainly
not. I was not sure that was true of the Americans frankly. I
honestly do not think so. Very clearly this was an unusual campaign—I
say "unusual" but my goodness me there have been too
many campaigns in my time as Permanent Secretary; this must have
been the fifth. This was a case unlike the first Gulf War, where
there was a clear decision to mount a military operation to remove
Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and that decision was taken early and
it was just a question of when the build-up was sufficiently advanced
for it to go forward. This was a different situation. This was
a much more political issue, where diplomacy was pressed right
to the end and of course the climate in the UK as to the merits
of an operation was much more uncertain than has been the case
in other operations. We do not require constitutionally a parliamentary
decision to commit forces, but in these circumstances, the fact
that the Prime Minister judged that it was necessary to have parliamentary
approval underlined the delicacy of the situation within the political
environment. This was a different sort of operation from many
others we have had in the past. You will have heard, one always
hears, we heard ourselves and inside the Ministry of Defence it
was quite normal to telephone one's colleagues in America and
say "We hear this" or "We hear that" and always
the answer was that the military men had to get on with their
planning but the President had not made a decision. That was well
after the point you are talking about.
Q1693 Chairman: Can you describe the
procedure by which the campaign objectives were drawn up? How
early did the process begin? You arrived in the middle of 2002,
if I recall?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Arrived where?
Q1694 Chairman: In the MOD.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: No, I have been
in the MOD since 1998. I was just keeping a low profile.
Q1695 Perhaps I have not read the newspapers;
I have gone off reading newspapers. You are a great survivor,
Sir Kevin.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I was obviously
keeping a very low profile.
Q1696 Chairman: Very skilful.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: These objectives
were developed in the same timescale as the overall planning was
being developed, during the autumn and into early 2003. They were
done in conjunction with the Foreign Office, whereby an overall
political context was established within which the military objectives
were set. That was why, as I recall it, when the objectives were
published, they were published together: the overall foreign policy
objective with the military specific objectives within them.
Mr Lee: I may get the dates here
slightly wrong, but two levels of objectives were published and
laid before Parliament. First there were the overall policy objectives,
which I think I am right in saying were put before Parliament
by the Foreign Secretary in November last year.[1]
Then there were the military campaign objectives which were laid
before the House right about the time of the start of the military
campaign, in other words after the vote in Parliament, towards
the end of that week.[2]
The original policy objectives, as the name implies, were rather
broad government objectives across the piece and then the more
specific military campaign objectives were published at the outset
of the military campaign.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I think we are
saying the same thing. I think Mr Lee is referring to the policy
objectives at the time of the resolution in November. I was referring
to the joint objectives which were published at the very point
of the operation beginning.
Q1697 Chairman: It was said that this
was an effects-based operation. Can you tell us how those effects
were defined and decided upon?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It was obviously
a combination of policy decision and technical capability. It
was effects based in the sense that quite clearly we had no quarrel
with the people of Iraq, so it was very important that this operation,
when it had to go as a military operation, should be as precise
as possible and target the regime and the decision-making processes
of the state, so that minimum damage was caused to the Iraqi people.
That was possible, because of the evolution of military equipment
over the period. Eighty-five% of the air delivered systems were
precision guidance systems in this campaign, far higher for example
than Kosovo and certainly compared with the first Gulf War when
virtually everything was "dumb" bombs. We had a combination
of clear political objective with a technical capability to support
that by the way in which we employed military force. As it rolled
out, the campaign itself was managed in such a way as to bring
about the collapse of the Iraqi military capability, even though
much of its physical presence still remained, in other words to
disable them by multiple strikes across the whole range of their
activities so that they lacked efficient co-ordination of command
and control, even though the units were still in existence, which
is of course why there was such relatively little destruction
of the armed forces, but they became incapable of organising military
operations themselves.
Q1698 Chairman: With whom do you chiefly
deal in the Department of Defense? The American system is rather
more confusing than others. Who was your opposite number and how
would you describe the political working relationship between
yourself and other senior MOD officials and your counterparts
in the US Administration?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Obviously we
have had very close relationships with the Americans, particularly
on Iraq. It is often forgotten that we had our northern and southern
no-fly zone military operations going for ten years with the United
States. This has obviously been our closest ally for a long time
and we have very close entrenched links, both organisationally
and on the basis of individuals. I have known people in the current
US Administration for 25 years and worked with them for that period.
I am not unique in that respect. The relationships went throughout
the system: military to military relationships, DOD to Ministry
of Defence relationships, the Hoon/Rumsfeld relationship was very
important in all of this, as much as, at the top level, the Prime
Minister and the President, Number 10 and the White House, the
Foreign Secretary and Colin Powell. Throughout the system there
were interlocking relationships of personalities. The key thing
about this campaign is that in recent years Rumsfeld had created
a much more powerful system of the big commanders in chief, the
CinCs, who were given much wider authority and power than previously
in the American system. They reported directly through to him,
so that the joint chiefs of staff in the US system had a rather
less direct role in managing the conflict than was the case, for
example, in the Gulf War. Therefore it was necessary for us to
match that by having our own contacts very firmly embedded into
Tampa with CentCom, as well as our normal relationships with the
joint chiefs of staff, between CDS and his opposite number, between
me and Wolfowitz and all the rest of the system. We had to change
our own ways slightly working with the US Administration on this
to reflect their own shift in controlling and commanding military
operations.
Q1699 Chairman: Do I deduce from what
you said that Wolfowitz was your main point of contact, you would
more naturally talk to him?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: He would have
been my formal point of contact, although in fact, in the planning
period, I had quite a number of conversations with him, but when
the operational phase began it was much more an integrated military
operation. I am perhaps unusual in the sense that I have been
around for a long time and I know a rather wide spread of American
contacts. I would not say he was the only one but formally speaking
he would have been the one. However, the Hoon/Rumsfeld link worked
so well throughout that period that it was not particularly necessary
for me to have that relationship. They spoke to each other on
a weekly basis.
1 Note from Witness: The policy objectives were
set out in Parliament on 7 January 2003. Back
2
Note from Witness: The military objectives were set out in Parliament
on 20 March 2003. Back
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