The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
•
There were
soon demands for an independent judge-led inquiry into the
pre-conflict
intelligence.
•
The Government
was quick to acknowledge the need for a review, rejecting
an
independent
inquiry in favour of reviews initiated by the House of
Commons
Foreign Affairs
Committee (FAC) and the Intelligence and Security Committee
of
Parliament
(ISC).
•
The
Government’s reluctance to establish an independent public inquiry
became
untenable
in January 2004 when President Bush announced his own decision to
set
up an
independent inquiry in the US.
•
Faced with
criticism of the pre-conflict intelligence and the absence of
evidence of a
current
Iraqi WMD capability, Mr Blair sought to defend the decision
to take military
action by
emphasising instead:
––
Saddam
Hussein’s strategic intent;
––
the
regime’s breaches of Security Council resolutions; and
––
the
positive impact of military action in Iraq on global
counter-proliferation efforts.
•
The ISG’s
principal findings – that Iraq’s WMD capability had mostly been
destroyed
in 1991 but
that it had been Saddam Hussein’s strategic intent to preserve
the
capability
to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction – were significant,
but did
not support
statements made by the UK and US Governments before the
invasion,
which had
focused on Iraq’s current capabilities and an urgent and growing
threat.
•
The
explanation for military action put forward by Mr Blair in
October 2004 drew on
the ISG’s
findings, but was not the explanation given before the
conflict.
4.
In February
2003, Mr Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, approved
UK
participation
in a US-led rehearsal for the post-conflict search for evidence
of
WMD in
Iraq.
5.
Before
approving UK participation in the search itself, Mr Hoon
requested advice
on how to
ensure the impartiality of the exercise, including through the
possible
early
involvement of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and
Inspection
Commission
(UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA).
6.
During and
immediately after the invasion of Iraq, the search for WMD was
the
responsibility
of Exploitation Task Force-75 (XTF-75), a US-led military unit,
with small
UK and
Australian contingents.1
7.
XTF-75 was
deployed to carry out Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE), a military
term
for the
exploitation of “personnel, documents, electronic files, and
material captured at
the site,
while neutralizing the site or any of its contents”.
1
Vandal T et
al. The
Strategic Implications of Sensitive Site
Exploitation. National
Defense University,
National
War College, 2003.
426