So, despite my suspicions about how the Iraq war inquiry will eventually end, I will admit watching the proceedings is fairly interesting, even if it mostly reaffirms what we have heard from other quarters. There have been some surprises, but not many. Anyway, an overview:
- The USA was making noises about invasion as far back as 2001, though it varied as to how seriously these claims were made and taken by various officials.
- 9/11 sounded a death knell for the policy of containment and the ascendency of Iraq war hawks in the Bush administration.
- The British foreign policy establishment were initially wary of such attitudes, because of the legal status of such a war (in the words of Sir William Patey “we dismissed it at the time because it had no basis in law”).
- Blair’s attitude began to shift in early 2002, though there is no agreement over whether this was due to the Crawford ranch meeting or not. Sir Peter Ricketts, chairmain of JIC, claims that up until March 2002 there was “no increased appetite” among ministers for regime change via invasion.
- MI6 dismissed the claim of links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. There was no evidence of any serious cooperation.
- Iran, Libya, North Korea and the continuing war in Afghanistan were considered to be more serious concerns to British security.
- Intelligence concerning WMD wasn’t as coherent on the likelihood of a threat as was claimed to be. In the words of Sir William Ehrman, earlier intelligence about Hussein’s WMDs and missiles was “sporadic and patchy”. This contrasts with Blair’s claims that intelligence assessments had established “beyond a doubt” that Saddam had such programs underway.
- Tim Dowse, head of counter-proliferation at the FCO was certain WMD would be found.
- The 45 minutes claim, as well as that of “mass evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories” were not supported by the evidence.
- UNSC Resolution 1441 was designed as a trip-wire to justify a war.
- Weapons inspections were not given time to work
There are a couple of things I’d like to discuss in detail, but that will have to wait for another post. In the meantime, there is always the Iraq Inquiry Digest, if you want more.
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