4.2 |
Iraq WMD assessments, July to September 2002
856.
Asked whether
his statement that the WMD programme was growing
applied
to Iraq’s
nuclear programme, Mr Blair replied:
“… what was
set out in the dossier, and set out in very detailed form,
incidentally,
were all
the different items that he had been trying to procure, which could
indicate
a continuing
interest in nuclear weapons.”450
857.
Asked whether
it would have taken quite a long time to get from that point
to
having a
usable nuclear weapon, Mr Blair told the Inquiry:
“… if you
ask people about the nuclear weapons capability, for example, in
respect
of Iraq,
some people would say, ‘Yes, if they are doing it on their own, it
is going
to take
significant amount of time, but you can foreshorten that time if
you buy in
the material’.
“So one of
the reasons – and I emphasise again this whole proliferation issue
and
AQ Khan in
particular – was that it always worried me that any of these
countries,
if they
were so minded, could step up very quickly and get
…”451
858.
In its report,
the Butler Review stated:
“We
conclude that it was a serious weakness that the JIC’s warnings
on
the
limitation of the intelligence underlying its judgements were not
made
sufficiently
clear in the dossier.
“We
understand why the Government felt it had to meet the
mounting
public and
Parliamentary demand for information. We also recognise
that
there is a
real dilemma between giving the public an authoritative
account
of the
intelligence picture and protecting the objectivity of the JIC from
the
pressures
imposed by providing information for public debate. It is
difficult
to resolve
these requirements. We conclude with the benefit of
hindsight,
that making
public that the JIC had authorship of the dossier was a
mistaken
judgement,
though we do not criticise the JIC for taking responsibility
for
clearance
of the intelligence content of the document. However, in
the
particular
circumstances, the publication of such a document in the name
and
with the
authority of the JIC had the result that more weight was placed on
the
intelligence
than it could bear.”452
450
Public
hearing, 2 February 2010, page 88.
451
Public
hearing, 2 February 2010, pages 88-89.
452
Review of
Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction [“The
Butler Report”], 14 July 2004, HC 898,
paragraphs
465-466.
279