The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
893.
The Assessment
stated that, in southern Iraq, “Some 545 sarin nerve
agent
warheads
for 122mm rockets had been recovered.” The UK did not know the
original
sources or
the sites from which the weapons had been recovered. The
Assessment
judged that
they had been produced before 1991 and were probably from
forward
ammunition
supply points, not the principal CW storage depot at Al Muthanna or
any
other large
depot. The warheads did “not
constitute evidence of a concerted Iraqi
plan to
retain chemical weapons covertly post-1991 in a viable state for
future
use”. Their
existence could be explained by a number of reasons, including
careless
disposal,
poor accounting or simple loss or abandonment. The Assessment also
stated
that Iraqi
sarin “had a relatively short shelf life”.
894.
The munitions
recovered at Taji were “CW-capable” but no CW agents had
been
identified.
895.
The Assessment
stated that small numbers of munitions designed to carry
agents
other than
sarin had been recovered, “including 11 or 12 155mm mustard-based
artillery
rounds”.
None contained “more than residual traces of mustard”.
896.
The Assessment
also stated:
“It is
unlikely ever to be possible to reconcile the tens of thousands of
122mm
chemical
weapons that the former regime declared it had manufactured, used
and
destroyed
with figures from UNSCOM or the findings of the Iraq Survey
Group.
We judge
that further recoveries of sarin-based chemical weapons are
highly
likely, but we
cannot estimate how many will be found in total.”
897.
This
Section has considered the impact of the failure to find
stockpiles
of WMD in
Iraq in the months immediately after the invasion, and of the
ISG’s
emerging
conclusions, on:
•
the
Government’s response to demands for an independent
judge-led
inquiry
into pre-conflict intelligence on Iraq; and
•
the
Government’s public presentation of the nature of the threat
from
Saddam
Hussein’s regime and the decision to go to war.
898.
The Inquiry
has not sought to comment in detail on the specific
conclusions
of the ISC,
FAC, Hutton and Butler Reports, all of which were published before
the
withdrawal
by SIS in September 2004 of a significant proportion of the
intelligence
underpinning
the JIC Assessments and September 2002 dossier on which
UK
policy had
rested.
899.
In addition
to the conclusions of those reports, the Inquiry notes
the
forthright
statement in March 2005 of the US Commission on the
Intelligence
Capabilities
of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass
Destruction.
604