General Sir Mike Jackson and the art of cover-up
Is it credible that the man who commanded the British Army in Iraq never voiced his misgivings about the war to the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair?
Eamonn McCann, 26 Sep 2007
So the man who commanded the British Army at the invasion of Iraq has delivered a stinging condemnation of the Bush administration.
In his widely-publicised autobiography, Soldier, General Sir Mike Jackson praises the performance of the British bigwigs, but makes scathing criticism of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld – “intellectually bankrupt” – and Washington’s perspective on rebuilding the country post-Saddam – “nonsensical”.
I imagine Hot Press readers, sensible folk to a woman and man, will nod their heads and murmur, “Fair play.” But a couple of things confuse me.
How come General Sir Mike didn’t mention his reservations at a time when this might have made a real difference? Why didn’t he alert the government which was sending his troops into war to the doubts and fears that he felt?
Blair’s number two, current premier Gordon Brown, says he never realised the general entertained these misgivings. The Foreign Secretary of the day, the late Robin Cook, made no mention of Jackson’s hesitancy in his memoir, Point of Departure, which dealt at length with Blair’s dismissal of objections to the war. (No mention of the matter, either, in Alistair Campbell’s recent autobiography, but that can be discounted, Campbell being an accomplished liar.)
Is this credible? That the Chief of the General Staff had serious concerns about the likely results of the invasion but chose not to share these with his political chiefs? After all, he’d let it be known publicly at the time that he was anxious about the legality of the war, to the extent that he took legal counsel before pronouncing himself satisfied that the action was “legitimate under international law.”
“Having had some part to play in putting Slobodan Milosevic into a cell in The Hague,” he writes, “I had no wish to become his neighbour.”
So why didn’t he also share his worries about US intentions?
An explanation is suggested by Jackson’s role in the Bloody Sunday murders.
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