UK officers said they found it hard to communicate with their US counterparts.
Newly-leaked UK documents have revealed deep tension between British senior military commanders in Iraq and their American allies.
Britain'sSunday Telegraph has published private statements made by top military figures and their political masters, revealing that during the first year of the conflict in May 2003 to May 2004, top UK officers said they found it hard to communicate with their US counterparts.
The British chief of staff in Iraq Colonel J. K. Tanner even described the leading US officials as "a group of Martians" for whom "dialogue is alien".
He added that despite the so-called special Washington-London relations, the British commanders were treated no differently than the Portuguese.
Also the top British commander in Iraq, Major General Andrew Stewart disclosed that "our ability to influence US policy in Iraq seemed to be minimal", adding that he constantly tried to refuse orders from his US superiors.
The document disclosures come two days before the start of a long-awaited public hearing of Britain's involvement in the 2003 Iraq war.
The inquiry will begin on Tuesday and will consist of testimonies by former high-ranking officials about the reasons the country went into the conflict.
Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix are also reportedly on the list of witnesses in the inquiry.
So far, two British studies of the war have been carried out.
The first, which was known as the 'Hutton Inquiry', looked into the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly -- a government weapons scientist -- who was found dead days after an interview with the BBC in which he accused former premier Blair's office of producing a dossier outlining how Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to war.
The report, which was considered a 'whitewash', cleared the government of blame for Kelly's death, ruling that the prominent scientist had committed suicide in 2003.
A separate 2004 inquiry into intelligence on Iraq also cleared Blair's government, but criticized spy agencies for relying on seriously flawed or unreliable sources.
Findings of the new inquiry will not be published before next summer, meaning the conclusions won't be known before Britain's June 2010 national elections.
The leaked papers also confirmed that Blair misled Britons about the reasons for the Iraq war and the invasion was actually planned a year earlier.
In July 2002, Blair told British lawmakers and the public at a House of Commons committee session that the UK's objective in Iraq was "disarmament, not regime change" and that he had no plans to invade Iraq.
The report quoted the documents as revealing that despite Blair's remarks, a full invasion of Iraq was being planned more then a year earlier.
"Tony Blair consistently denied to Parliament and the public that the UK government was preparing for war in Iraq, yet these documents show that planning began as far back as 2002," Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, said on Sunday.
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