4.1 | Iraq WMD assessments, pre-July 2002

452. Mr Dowse added:

“Clearly, the first step is to resolve with the DIS just how robust are their new figures.

If they carry no more confidence than the previous ones, which we have been using

in public for several years, I see no reason to change our lines …

“Thereafter, if it appears we do have to change our public line, I wonder if we might

finesse the presentational difficulty by changing the terms? Instead of talking about

tonnes of precursor chemicals (which don’t mean much to the man in the street

anyway), could we focus on munitions and refer to ‘precursor chemicals sufficient

to produce x thousand SCUD warheads/aerial bombs/122mm rockets filled with

mustard gas/the deadly nerve agents tabun/sarin/VX’? Presumably we know from

UNSCOM what types of munitions the Iraqis had prepared or were working on at the

time of the Gulf War.”

453. Mr Dowse concluded:

“I realise that this would not in the end hoodwink a real expert, who would be able

to reverse the calculation and work out that our assessment precursor quantities

had fallen. But the task would not be straightforward, and would be impossible for a

layman. And the result would, I think, have more impact on the target audience for

[an] unclassified paper.”

454. Mr Scarlett sent Sir David Manning a revised draft of the paper on WMD on

4 April.197 That “differed slightly” from the version provided the previous week, because

figures for CW material for which UN inspectors had been unable to account had been

included. Those were being “double-checked”.

455. The draft made clear that the UK could not be sure whether the material the

inspectors could not account for had been destroyed or remained at the disposal of the

Iraqi Government.

456. Before the first meeting of the inter-departmental group to discuss the paper on

Iraq’s WMD prepared by the Assessments Staff, Mr McKane wrote to colleagues stating:

“The only outstanding question in relation to the WMD paper of which I am aware

is a discrepancy between certain numbers quoted by Ministers in Parliament and

the latest assessment generated in the preparation of the paper for publication. The

issue, as I understand it, is whether it is preferable to correct the previous answers

to Parliament by means of an inspired PQ or to disguise the discrepancy in the new

WMD document.”198

197 Minute Scarlett to Manning, 4 April 2002, ‘Iraqi WMD Programmes: Proposed Public Paper’.

198 Letter McKane to Tanfield, 9 April 2002, ‘Iraq’.

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