The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
706.
Asked whether
it was “beyond anybody’s doubt”, Mr Blair stated that
the
“March 2002
JIC Assessment”, said: “It was clear that …”386
“… if I
said, ‘It was clear that’ in the Foreword, rather than ‘I believe,
beyond doubt’,
it would
have had the same impact.”
708.
Mr Blair
added that, based on the Executive Summary and the information
that
followed in
the Iraq dossier, it was “hard to come to any other conclusion than
that this
person
[Saddam Hussein] has a continuing WMD programme”. Mr Blair
could not “see
how anyone
could come to a different conclusion”.387
709.
The JIC
Assessment of 9 September stated that intelligence
indicated
that the
production of chemical and biological weapons was taking place
and
the
Executive Summary of the dossier stated that the JIC judged that
Iraq had
continued
to produce chemical and biological agents. Neither supported
the
statement
that the “assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt”
that
Saddam
Hussein had “continued to produce chemical and biological
weapons”.
710.
The
questions raised by the DIS about the validity of these
judgements
by the
JIC are addressed earlier in this Section.
711.
The JIC
Assessment of 1 December 2000 stated:
•
Intelligence
suggested “some biological
and
chemical
warfare
activity”. Iraq
was
“rebuilding its civil chemical industry, including facilities
formerly associated
with
chemical weapons”. The JIC judged that “Iraq may
already be producing
biological
agent and could produce a small number of chemical
weapons
within
weeks of a decision
to do so”.
•
Iraq could
“build a large scale
production capability within a few years”
“were
economic sanction lifted”.
•
The same
was “probably true for biological
weapons”.
•
Iraq “could
produce small but significant amounts of mustard agent within
weeks
of a
decision to do so. It could produce nerve agent within months … It
could
also
produce small numbers of CW munitions and missile
warheads.”
•
Iraq still
had “sufficient expertise and material to produce BW
without
procurement
from abroad. It could use legitimate civil or dedicated BW
facilities,
including
mobile laboratories, for this work.”388
386
Public
hearing, 29 January 2010, pages 80-81.
387
Public
hearing, 29 January 2010, pages 81-82.
388
JIC
Assessment,
1 December 2000, ‘Iraq’s Military Capabilities’.
250