The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
“Therefore,
though the ISG have not found evidence of actual weapons, they
have
found
evidence of programmes. Any of this would have triggered a
justification for
conflict.
“Dr Kay has
said:
•
He believes
no major new production of weapons occurred post-1991.
•
He
speculates that Saddam may have been told tales about
the
programmes
or that some stuff moved to Syria.
•
But some
old stockpiles may well exist and the capabilities and
determination
remained intact.
•
That Iraq was
‘a very dangerous place’.
•
That the
conflict was justified, and
•
That the
US/UK did not interfere with the intelligence.
“He makes a
claim also that Saddam was trying to manufacture ricin up to the
last
minute …
but UK services at least don’t seem to know the provenance of
this.
“(d)
however, in view of the fact that we certainly thought production
of new weapons
was
continuing and it may be that it wasn’t, it is sensible to learn
the intelligence
lessons.
“Therefore,
the US is going to have a Commission of Experts look into
it.
“The UK
will refer the issue back to the Intelligence and Security
Committee …
“Meanwhile
the ISG will continue its work on the ground since there are at
least
26 million
pages of documents and many unvisited sites still to follow
up.”
647.
On the wider
threat from WMD, Mr Blair wrote:
“Whatever
the intelligence from Iraq, let us be in no doubt about the
threat.
“The threat
of terrorism and proliferation of WMD continues. It would be
disastrous if
doubts
about the strength of intelligence in Iraq blinded us to the
danger. We know
that Iran
and North Korea are trying to develop nuclear weapons and it is
only since
Iraq that
real pressure on them has started to pay off.
“We now
know that Libya was far closer then we thought to nuclear
capability and on
CW than we
thought; and, since Iraq they are working with us to eliminate it
…”
“If we have
to accept that some of the Iraq intelligence was wrong, we will do
so.
But let us
not either (a) lurch to the opposite extreme and start pretending
Iraq
had nothing;
or (b) let any intelligence inaccuracy move us off confronting
the
WMD issue.
552