4.4 | The
search for WMD
284.
Mr Straw
also stated that the September 2002 dossier had said “that Iraq’s
military
planning
allowed for some of the weapons of mass destruction to be readied
within 45
minutes of
an order to use them”.
285.
Subsequently,
Mr Straw said that the Foreword was:
“… subject
to discussion and agreement from the head of the JIC to ensure,
plainly
that what
was in the Foreword was entirely consistent with what was in the
body of
the
document.”
286.
Asked by
Mr Michael Portillo (Conservative) whether “any intelligence
officers”
had
remonstrated with Mr Blair or any other Minister that the 45
minutes point should
not have
been included in the Foreword to the dossier, because it was based
only on a
single
source, Mr Straw replied “no”.
287.
Pressed by
Mr Robin Cook (Labour) to acknowledge that the policy of
containment
had been
successful and that the statement was wrong because no weapons
ready for
use within
45 minutes had been found in Iraq, Mr Straw
replied:
“I do not
accept that, because we have not yet been able to find physical
evidence of
the
possession of such weapons, these weapons did not therefore exist.
That flies in
the face of
all the other evidence …”
288.
Mr Straw
stated that the 45 minutes point was not “a key factor in the
decision to
go to war”,
and “The basis for action was not an intelligence dossier that had
been put
before the
House six months before”.
289.
In response to
an intervention from Mr Kennedy pointing out what
Mr Blair had
said in his
speech to the House on 24 September about Iraq’s WMD
programmes,
Mr Straw
stated that the international community had judged that Iraq posed
a threat to
international
peace and security and it was:
“…
impossible to explain Saddam’s behaviour unless he had weapons of
mass
destruction.
“Dr Blix is
just about to publish a further report … The chief weapon inspector
said
that
Baghdad had supplied his team with increasingly detailed
information but that:
even at the
end, Iraq failed to allay suspicions that it had something to hide,
and
its trend
of withholding pertinent information meant that the suspicions
mounted
and mounted.
“That was
true for Dr Blix and it was also true for the Security Council … It
is
impossible
to read those reports [from the inspectors to the Security Council]
and
to set them
against the evidence of Saddam’s behaviour without coming to
the
conclusion
that, in Dr Blix’s words, there was a strong presumption for the
holding
of those
weapons.”
479