London: 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
First Published: Sunday, November 22, 2009, 18:07