Iraq 1990–2003: The Political Road to War — Kuwait, Sanctions, Inspections & the 2003 Decision // Log 046

I came to this politics from the other end of the chain. I was not in Downing Street, Washington or the United Nations when the decisions were made. I was one of the soldiers who later had to operate in the country those decisions created. By the time I arrived on TELIC 3, after previous tours in Bosnia and Kosovo, I knew almost immediately that Iraq was a different world.

That experience does not give me privileged knowledge of the Cabinet or the intelligence assessments. What it does give me is a reason to care about the gap between a political decision and what that decision eventually looks like on a road, at a checkpoint or under incoming fire. So I have kept the political claims below tied to the public record and used my own experience only where it genuinely belongs.

Why I begin in Kuwait, not in 2003

On 2 August 1990, Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait. The invasion followed arguments over debt, oil production and borders, but whatever grievances Baghdad claimed, the result was an interstate invasion, occupation and attempted annexation.

The UN Security Council condemned the invasion and imposed sanctions. A US-led coalition then drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait in early 1991. The ceasefire that followed did more than stop the fighting: UN Security Council Resolution 687 created a disarmament regime requiring Iraq to declare and eliminate specified chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles, while placing its nuclear programme under international verification.

This history matters because Iraq's weapons record was real. Saddam's regime had used chemical weapons during the Iran–Iraq War and against Kurdish civilians, most notoriously at Halabja in 1988. Inspectors after 1991 also uncovered prohibited programmes and undeclared activity.

But I think two things have to be held in the head at the same time. Iraq had a genuine history of chemical weapons, concealment and obstruction. That does not mean every specific claim made in 2002 and 2003 was therefore correct.

The 1990s: sanctions, inspectors and uncertainty

Through the 1990s, Iraq remained under extensive sanctions while UN inspectors tried to verify disarmament. The inspections found and destroyed prohibited capability, but there were repeated disputes over declarations, access and Iraqi cooperation.

The humanitarian effect of sanctions became a major controversy. The Oil-for-Food Programme was introduced to let Iraq sell oil for civilian needs under UN supervision, but arguments continued over the effect of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis and over Baghdad's own responsibility for how resources were used.

In 1998 the relationship between Iraq and the inspectors broke down again. Inspectors withdrew before the US and UK launched Operation Desert Fox, a short bombing campaign against Iraqi military and security targets. After that, there was no comparable inspection presence inside Iraq for several years.

That absence cut both ways politically. Those who favoured stronger action argued that Saddam had preserved uncertainty by obstructing inspection. Those who opposed invasion argued that the answer was to restore inspections and containment, not to go to war.

Saddam Hussein's regime

I do not think the argument over the invasion should turn Saddam into something he was not. His government was authoritarian and violent. Political opponents were imprisoned, tortured and killed; Kurdish and Shia communities suffered severe repression; and the regime had already launched aggressive wars and used chemical weapons.

Those facts help explain why Iraqi exiles and foreign governments wanted him removed. They do not automatically settle the separate questions of whether invasion was necessary in March 2003, whether the intelligence case was sound or whether the legal basis for war was sufficient.

9/11 changes the atmosphere

The attacks of 11 September 2001 transformed US national-security policy. Afghanistan was directly linked to those attacks through al-Qaeda and its Taliban sanctuary. Iraq was not responsible for 9/11.

What 9/11 did change was the amount of future risk American leaders were prepared to accept from hostile states suspected of pursuing unconventional weapons. Iraq moved rapidly up the policy agenda.

The United States had already adopted regime change in Iraq as an objective under the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act. After 9/11, the Bush administration increasingly argued that Saddam's regime, its history of defying UN resolutions and the possibility of weapons of mass destruction created an unacceptable future danger.

The British Government publicly framed its case more directly around enforcing Iraq's disarmament obligations through the UN system. The difference in emphasis became increasingly important during the diplomacy of 2002–03.

The people making the decisions

The personalities matter because policy does not write itself. Saddam Hussein sat at the centre of the Iraqi regime and carried the history of Kuwait, repression, chemical-weapons use and repeated confrontation with inspectors.

The British dossier and the problem of certainty

In September 2002, the UK Government published a dossier arguing that Iraq retained chemical and biological weapons capability and continued to pursue prohibited programmes. Its presentation became crucial because it conveyed a degree of confidence that later investigations found was not supported by the intelligence with the certainty presented to the public.

The best-known example was the claim that some Iraqi chemical and biological weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes. The Iraq Inquiry later concluded that important limitations and uncertainties around the intelligence were not made sufficiently clear.

Resolution 1441: a final opportunity

On 8 November 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1441. It stated that Iraq had been and remained in material breach of its obligations, gave it a “final opportunity” to comply and established an enhanced inspection regime through UNMOVIC and the IAEA.

The resolution warned of “serious consequences” for continued violations. It did not, however, produce agreement among Security Council members that the US or UK could automatically begin military action whenever they judged Iraq non-compliant. That disagreement sat at the heart of the final months before war.

Inspectors return — and the argument narrows

UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors returned to Iraq. They visited sites, challenged gaps in declarations and reported difficulties with Iraq's proactive cooperation. At the same time, they had not found the large active stockpiles being described publicly.

By early 2003, the real argument was no longer simply “inspection or no inspection”. It was whether inspection was producing enough cooperation and certainty, whether giving it more time could work, and whether existing Security Council resolutions already provided authority to use force.

The second resolution that never came

The US and UK sought support for another Security Council resolution that would make the path to military action clearer. France, Russia and others argued that inspections should continue and signalled opposition to authorising force at that point. No second resolution expressly authorising the invasion was adopted.

The British legal position relied on the argument that the authority to use force from Resolution 678, suspended by the 1991 ceasefire, could revive through Iraq's material breach of Resolution 687 and the findings of Resolution 1441. Other governments and international lawyers disputed that interpretation.

The Iraq Inquiry later examined how the UK obtained and communicated legal advice. It did not itself make a judicial ruling on the lawfulness of the invasion.

18 March 2003: Parliament votes

The House of Commons debated the Government's case and approved the motion supporting military action if Iraq failed to comply immediately with the disarmament demands presented by the Government.

That vote settled the immediate domestic political question for the Government. It did not make the international-law dispute disappear.

20 March 2003: the decision reaches the ground

The invasion began on 20 March 2003. British forces entered the war under Operation TELIC, concentrating heavily on southern Iraq and the approaches to Basra while Royal Marines operated around the Al-Faw Peninsula.

This is the point where the politics eventually connects with my own experience. I was not on the initial invasion, but when I arrived on TELIC 3 the decisions described above were no longer speeches, dossiers or UN resolutions. They had become roads, bases, checkpoints, riots, blast bombs, contacts and incoming mortar fire.

That was what struck me after Bosnia and Kosovo. Iraq did not feel like another version of the same job. The whole environment felt different, and the force was already dealing with problems that were a long way from the clean conventional-war narrative of March and April 2003.

Continue to Log 048 — Basra through TELIC 3, 6 and 10 →

What was found after the invasion?

Coalition forces did not find the active chemical and biological stockpiles that had formed such a prominent part of the public case for war. Investigations instead found that Iraq's programmes had largely been dismantled or rendered inactive years earlier, although the regime retained knowledge, ambitions and a long record of concealment.

For me, this is one of the places where the history has to resist slogans. Saddam's previous weapons programmes were real. The specific assessment of a deployable arsenal in 2003 was wrong. Both can be true.

What the Iraq Inquiry concluded

The Iraq Inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot and published in 2016, is more useful than reducing the argument to “everyone lied” or, at the other extreme, pretending nothing important went wrong.

• The UK chose to join the invasion before peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted.
• Iraq posed no imminent threat to the UK when military action was chosen.
• The severity of the WMD threat was presented with a certainty not justified by the intelligence evidence.
• Containment and inspection remained available options.
• Planning and preparation for the consequences of invasion and occupation were inadequate.
• The Inquiry did not itself make a formal legal ruling on the war, but it strongly criticised aspects of the process by which the UK reached and presented its legal position.

Why this matters to me as military history

I can separate the political argument from the soldier's job without pretending the two are unrelated. Once a war begins, political ambiguity does not stay in Westminster or Washington. It lands on the ground with the people expected to make the policy work.

Soldiers can win firefights, seize bridges, clear routes and protect bases. None of those things answers what political order should replace the state that has just been removed. The conventional invasion defeated Saddam's regime quickly. Security, governance, insurgency, militia power, reconstruction and legitimacy proved much harder.

That is why I put this article at the front of the Iraq series. When I later write about my first contacts on TELIC 3 or about being genuinely frightened on TELIC 10, I do not want those memories floating free of the decisions that put British soldiers in Basra in the first place.

Related Gallus pieces

• Operation TELIC 2003–2011 — campaign guide →
• Basra 2003–2009 — my three-tour view →
• Basra 2003 Military Map T-Shirt
• Operation TELIC Iraq Veteran T-Shirt

Sources and further reading

• United Nations — Security Council Resolution 1441 (2002)
• The Report of the Iraq Inquiry
• House of Commons Library — Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability
• Hansard — Iraq debate, 18 March 2003
• IAEA — Hans Blix and inspection background
• George W. Bush Presidential Library

I was a soldier who later served in Iraq, not a participant in the political decision-making of 2002–03. My first-person passages describe what those decisions eventually looked like from my end of the chain. The political chronology and judgments remain grounded in the public sources above.