Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry has begun honing in on failures of US and British post-conflict planning. As General Sir Frederick Viggers told the inquiry, problems arose from “not having defined the ends, ways and means of how we were going to deliver this phase of the campaign.” None of this is particularly new.
As further evidence is provided to the inquiry, it will become even clearer how unprepared the British state – the Government, civil service and military – were for the task at hand, and how soldiers, diplomats and development workers were expected to deliver near-miracles with limited resources, limited backing, limited security and limited public support. I was there and it was not very pretty.
While Sir John will presumably apportion blame, it’s far more important to ensure that mistakes are not made again.
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