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Iraq inquiry gives insight to UK subservience to US

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Dec 3, IRNA -- The Iraq Inquiry Thursday gave insight to the UK’s subservience to the US after being told that Washington believed that Britain would take an active part in the Iraq war even if there were no attempts to solve the crisis through the UN.

US generals and former defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, seemingly refused to countenance the possibility that Britain would not commit troops, former UK chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce said.

“There was a complete reluctance to believe that," the head of Britain’s Armed Forces between 2001 and 2003 told the inquiry in London.

"It was a case of: 'Yeah, I know you've got to say that, but come the day you'll be there.' [That] was the attitude," he said after telling American officers that the UK would not be committing troops unless they went through the UN process.

Last week, the inquiry was told that former British prime minister was thought to have secretly agreed with former US President George W Bush that the UK would support the US-led war a year before the March 2003 invasion.

Many British MPs, as well as sections of the press, have often accused Blair, who was subsequently awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, of being nothing more than “Bush’s poodle.

During his evidence, Boyce also said that he and other top British military officers found it "very frustrating" that they could not carry out logistical plans for the invasion because of fears that the public would assume the war was inevitable.

He said he had not been permitted to make purchases or carry out other practical planning for deployment to Iraq before November 2002, just four months before British troops joined the invasion.

The then-defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, had made this decision as he did not wish news of such concrete planning to leak out while the government was still officially committed to solving the dispute via the United Nations.

Former chief UN arms inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, who led the US campaign against the war, told IRNA in October 2002 that he was convinced that Blair could have prevented the war if he refused to send British troops to join in the US invasion.