The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
Government’s
position that Iraq was a threat that had to be dealt with and it
needed
to disarm
or be disarmed.
•
That remained
the case up to and beyond the decision to invade Iraq in
March 2003.
•
The judgements
about Iraq’s capabilities and intentions relied too heavily on
Iraq’s
past
behaviour being a reliable indicator of its current and future
actions.
•
There was no
consideration of whether, faced with the prospect of a US-led
invasion,
Saddam
Hussein had taken a different position.
•
The Joint
Intelligence Committee (JIC) made the judgements in the UK
Government
September
dossier part of the test for Iraq.
•
Iraq’s
statements that it had no weapons or programmes were dismissed as
further
evidence of
a strategy of denial.
•
The extent to
which the JIC’s judgements depended on inference and
interpretation
of Iraq’s
previous attitudes and behaviour was not recognised.
•
At no stage
was the hypothesis that Iraq might no longer have chemical,
biological
or nuclear
weapons or programmes identified and examined by either the JIC or
the
policy
community.
•
A formal
reassessment of the JIC’s judgements should have taken place after
the
report to
the Security Council on 14 February 2003, by Dr Hans Blix,
Executive
Chairman of
the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission
(UNMOVIC),
or, at the very latest, after his report of 7 March.
•
Intelligence
and assessments made by the JIC about Iraq’s capabilities and
intent
continued
to be used to prepare briefing material to support Government
statements
in a way
which conveyed certainty without acknowledging the limitations
of
the intelligence.
•
The
independence and impartiality of the JIC remains of the utmost
importance.
•
The Secret
Intelligence Service (SIS) had a responsibility to ensure that
key
recipients
of its reporting were informed in a timely way when doubts arose
about key
sources and
when, subsequently, intelligence was withdrawn.
9.
As the
previous Sections of this Report show, there was an ingrained
belief within
the UK
Government that Saddam Hussein’s regime retained chemical and
biological
warfare
capabilities, was determined to preserve and if possible enhance
its capabilities,
including
at some point in the future a nuclear capability, and was pursuing
an active
policy of
deception and concealment.
10.
The UK
position reflected the widely shared view that when the UN
inspectors left
Iraq in
December 1998, Iraq had not fully accounted for major gaps and
inconsistencies
in its
declarations and had provided no credible proof that Iraq had
destroyed its
weapons
stockpiles and production infrastructure as it
claimed.
11.
In addition,
the description of Iraq’s capabilities and intent in the UK
Government
dossier,
Iraq’s
Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Assessment of the
British
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