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Britain's Iraq intelligence 'seriously flawed'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-14 21:29 An official inquiry into the quality of British
intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction said Wednesday that some
sources were “seriously flawed” or “unreliable” but found no evidence of
“deliberate distortion or culpable negligence.”
Lord Butler said, however, that a key prewar dossier prepared by Prime
Minister Tony Blair’s government on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein pushed
the government case to the limits of available intelligence.
Britain's Lord
Butler poses for photographs with a copy of his report at a news
conference in central London, July 14, 2004.
[Reuters] |
He found that vital qualifying
information on the limits of available intelligence were left out of the
September 2002 dossier.
Butler’s report contradicted a central claim made by Blair and found that,
before the start of the war in March 2003, Iraq “did not have significant, if
any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment or
developed plans for using them.”
The report comes after U.S. Senate committee said last week that most of the
Central Intelligence Agency’s claims on Saddam Hussein’s alleged arsenal were
overstated or unsupported. The committee chairman, noting that the United States
was not alone in its beliefs, called it a “global intelligence failure.”
Blair’s political opponents had hoped the Butler report would endorse their
view that his government pressured spy chiefs into hyping the threat posed by
Saddam.
“Tony Blair should admit that he was wrong about the size, scope and capacity
of Iraq’s WMD arsenal,” said Charles Kennedy, leader of the opposition Liberal
Democrat Party on Tuesday. “It’s time he acknowledged his mistakes and took the
blame.”
Blair in a bullish mood
Britain's Prime
Minister Tony Blair leaves Downing Street in London, July 14, 2004.
[Reuters] | Blair was in a bullish mood Tuesday
after receiving an advance copy of the report. Asked if he believed he had been
fed “duff intelligence” that had made him look foolish, he replied: “I don’t
accept that at all.”
The prime minister’s personal ratings have fallen in the aftermath of the
divisive war, and newspapers constantly speculate about the end of his run in
power. But he remains in a strong position. A recent poll asked whether
respondents would rather have Blair or opposition Conservative leader Michael
Howard as prime minister, and Blair was favored by 47 percent to 31 percent.
Blair set out his case for war in a September 2002 dossier on Iraq’s illicit
weapons programs. In it, Blair confidently asserted that the intelligence
“established beyond doubt ... that Saddam continued to produce chemical and
biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear
weapons.”
The dossier claimed Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons;
could deploy some within 45 minutes; and was trying to buy uranium in Africa to
develop nuclear weapons.
Since the fall of Baghdad, however, the Iraqi Survey Group has found no
stocks of WMD. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy
Agency, said documents supporting the uranium claim were forgeries and there was
no evidence of a resurgent nuclear program.
The 45-minute claim, mentioned four times in the dossier, has caused the
government the most trouble.
In May 2003, the British Broadcasting Corp. claimed Blair’s office had “sexed
up” the dossier by inserting the detail against the wishes of spy chiefs and
probably knew it was wrong.
In the course of battle between the government and the broadcaster, weapons
scientist David Kelly, named as the BBC’s source, committed suicide.
Two parliamentary committees — the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and the
Intelligence and Security Committee — cleared the government of “sexing up” the
dossier. Both said the “jury was still out” on the existence of WMD in Iraq.
The second report said vital caveats on the limits of British intelligence
had been left out and it should have made clear the 45-minute claim referred to
short-range battlefield munitions, not missiles.
Anti-war protestors
gather as Lord Butler delivered his committee's report on Britain's
pre-Iraq war intelligence gathering. Prime Minister Tony Blair told
parliament that he 'accepts' the findings of an inquiry into British
intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
[AFP] | Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi,
whose Iraqi National Accord group supplied Western intelligence agencies with
information on Saddam’s weapons, said Wednesday that the 45-minute claim “really
related to using such weapons against Iraqi troops if they moved against him.”
Allawi insisted Saddam was developing long-range weapons and had shown he was
ready to use chemical and biological weapons.
“Nobody could really say whether he was able to develop it completely,” he
told BBC radio.
Support from Bill Clinton
Blair received some supportive words Wednesday from former President Bill
Clinton, who said Britons needed to remember that “it was very difficult in the
aftermath of 9/11 for any world leader not to act on his intelligence.”
“And the British intelligence, whatever Lord Butler says about it, was
clearly even more forward-leading than the American intelligence in believing
that Saddam (Hussein) was trying to get nuclear materials, in believing that
Saddam had some kind of relationship with al-Qaida,” Clinton told British
Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Lord Hutton’s inquiry into Kelly’s suicide investigated deepest into the
workings of the government and its intelligence agencies. In his report, derided
by many as a “whitewash,” Hutton concluded Blair’s government had not misused
intelligence.
But, Hutton suggested that intelligence officials may have been sensitive to
what they perceived as their government’s determination to go to war.
He concluded that John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee
who signed off on the dossier, may have been “subconsciously influenced” by
Blair’s desire for strong evidence on WMD.
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