THE BRITISH military, it appears, believes in the strategic doctrine of getting retaliation in first. In PR as in war. The leaking to the Sunday Telegraph, presumably by senior army sources, of hundreds of pages of secret "lessons-learnt" analysis and testimony of officers on their Iraq experience was a warning shot across the bows of a public inquiry into the war which is led by Sir John Chilcot and opens today.
The army’s message was clear: the inquiry should focus primarily on politics, the political leaders and their deficiencies. The ill-equipped soldiers on the front line were let down by political obfuscation on the purpose of the war, delayed, and poor or non-existent planning for both the invasion in March 2003 and its aftermath, and by shortages of key equipment.
It is unlikely that the generals will escape unscathed, but, in truth, there is not an element of the broad mandate of the inquiry – from conception, to rationale, to legality, to the conduct of war and of peace, and the treatment of casualties – that is not likely to cause acute political pain to the Labour government as it teeters towards an election. Not least to the reputation of former prime minister Tony Blair, due to testify in the new year.
Sir John, a distinguished former senior public servant, assisted by two senior academics, has promised a “full and insightful” account of the decision-making which took Britain into war, and that the inquiry will not shirk from criticisms of individuals or organisations if justified. That has not always been the case of inquiries by the British establishment, but the reality is that much of the evidence he will consider is already in the public domain, or likely, as the weekend proved, to end up in it. Avoiding disturbing conclusions may not be an option.
For Mr Blair that is particularly so. We already know that by April 2002 he was willing to give President Bush an assurance that Britain would support the invasion with its troops, while in July denying to a Commons committee that any decision had been taken. He continued to insist that the rationale for war was weapons of mass destruction not regime change, when intelligence sources told him Saddam had none. And, although planning for war began at the most senior level of the army as early as February 2002, there can be little doubt that the political dissembling contributed to the failure, graphically illustrated by the leaks, to plan in depth for the military operation and reconstruction afterwards. Mr Blair is in for an uncomfortable spring.