The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
896.
The Inquiry
shares the Butler Review’s conclusions that it was a
mistake
not to see
the risk of combining in the September dossier the JIC’s
assessment
of
intelligence and other evidence with the interpretation and
presentation of the
evidence in
order to make the case for policy action.
897.
The nature
of the two functions is fundamentally different. As can be
seen
from the
JIC Assessments quoted in, and published with, this report, they
contain
careful
language intended to ensure that no more weight is put on the
evidence
than it can
bear. Organising the evidence in order to present an argument in
the
language of
Ministerial statements produces a quite different type of
document.
898.
The
widespread perception that the September 2002 dossier
overstated
the
firmness of the evidence about Iraq’s capabilities and intentions
in order to
influence
opinion and “make the case” for action to disarm Iraq has
produced
a damaging
legacy, including undermining trust and confidence in
Government
statements,
particularly those which rely on intelligence which cannot
be
independently
verified.
899.
As a
result, in situations where the policy response may involve
military
action and
the evidence, at least in part, depends on inferential
judgements
drawn from
necessarily incomplete intelligence, it may be more difficult to
secure
support for
the Government’s position and agreement to action.
900.
The
explicit and public use of material from JIC Assessments to
underpin
policy
decisions will be infrequent. But, from the evidence on the
compilation of
the
September dossier, the lessons for any similar exercise in future
would be:
•
The need
for clear separation of the responsibility for analysis
and
assessment
of intelligence from the responsibility for making the
argument
for a policy.
•
The
importance of precision in describing the position. In the case
of
the
September dossier, for instance, the term “programme” was used
to
describe
disparate activities at very different stages of maturity. There
was
a
“programme” to extend the range of the Al Samoud missile. There
was
no
“programme” in any meaningful sense to develop and produce
nuclear
weapons.
Use of the shorthand CW or BW in relation to Iraq’s
capability
obscured
whether the reference was to weapons or warfare. Constant
use
of the term
“weapons of mass destruction” without further
clarification
obscured
the differences between the potential impact of
nuclear,
biological
and chemical weapons and the ability to deliver them
effectively.
For
example, there would be a considerable difference between the
effects
of an
artillery shell filled with mustard gas, which is a battlefield
weapon,
and a
long-range ballistic missile with a chemical or biological
warhead,
which is a
weapon of terror.
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