4.1 |
Iraq WMD assessments, pre-July 2002
548.
When he saw
the draft paper on WMD countries of concern on 8
March,
Mr Straw
commented:
“Good, but
should not Iraq be first and also have more text? The paper
has
to show why
there is an exceptional threat from Iraq. It does not quite
do
549.
On 18
March, Mr Straw decided that a paper on Iraq should be issued
before
one
addressing other countries of concern.
550.
On 22
March, Mr Straw was advised that the evidence would not
convince
public
opinion that there was an imminent threat from Iraq.
551.
Publication
was postponed. No.10 decided that the Cabinet Office
Overseas
and Defence
Secretariat should co-ordinate the production of a “public
dossier”
on Iraq,
and that Mr Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s Director of
Communications and
Strategy,
should “retain the lead role on the timing/form of its
release”.
552.
The
statements prepared for, and used by, the UK Government in
public,
from late
2001 onwards, about Iraq’s proscribed activities and the
potential
threat they
posed were understandably written in more direct and less
nuanced
language
than the JIC Assessments on which they drew.
553.
The
question is whether, in doing so, they conveyed more certainty
and
knowledge
than was justified, or created tests it would be impossible for
Iraq to
meet. That
is of particular concern in relation to the evidence in this
Section on
two key
issues.
554.
First, the
estimates of the weapons and material related to Iraq’s
chemical
and
biological warfare programmes for which UNSCOM had been unable
to
account
were based on extrapolations from UNSCOM records. Officials
explicitly
advised
that it was “inherently difficult to arrive at precise figures”. In
addition, it
was
acknowledged that neither UNSCOM nor the UK could be certain about
either
exactly
what had existed or what Iraq had already destroyed.
555.
The revised
estimates announced by Mr Straw on 2 May were
increasingly
presented
in Government statements as the benchmark against which Iraq
should
be
judged.
556.
Second, the
expert MOD examination of issues in late March 2002
exposed
the
difficulties Iraq would have to overcome before it could acquire a
nuclear
weapon.
That included the difficulty of acquiring suitable fissile material
from the
“black
market”.
235
Minute
McDonald to Ricketts, 11 March 2002, ‘Iraq’.
111