Leaked documents have revealed the extent of tensions between UK military commanders in Iraq and their US allies.
The British chief of staff in Iraq, Colonel J.K.Tanner, branded his American military counterparts as "a group of Martians" for whom "dialogue is alien". He added: "Despite our so-called 'special relationship,' I reckon we were treated no differently to the Portuguese."
The senior UK commander in the country, Major General Andrew Stewart, disclosed how he spent "a significant amount of my time" "evading" and "refusing" orders from his US superiors.
The frank comments came in internal Ministry of Defence interviews with Army figures who had just returned from Operations Telic 2 and 3 - the first year of "peacekeeping" operations in Iraq, from May 2003 to May 2004.
Transcripts of the discussions, along with "post operational reports" by British commanders, have been obtained by the Daily Telegraph.
General Stewart bluntly stated that "our ability to influence US policy in Iraq seemed to be minimal". He said it was "incredible" that there was not even a secure communication link between his headquarters in Basra and the US commander, General Rick Sanchez, in Baghdad.
The details emerged on the eve of the first public hearings by the long-awaited Iraq War Inquiry. Speaking to the Press Association, the head of the inquiry, retired Whitehall mandarin Sir John Chilcot, pledged to produce a "full and insightful" account of the decision-making process which took Britain into the conflict.
He said he and his team would not shrink from making criticisms of individuals or organisations if they were justified.
But at the same time he stressed the inquiry was not a court of law set up to determine issues of guilt and innocence. Their job, he said, was to "write the narrative in order to learn the lessons for the future".
To that end, he said that the witness hearings which begin on Tuesday in Westminster would forego the "adversarial ding-dong" of the courtroom in order to try to get "a naturalness" into the exchanges.
